Bari: New Year’s Eve Supper

The first course: antipasti. The honey trap.
Oysters, whitebait, wild boar salami
Baresi salami, fennel, chicory and more.
Eat too much and you’ll never last the course.

The second course: turnip tops on bread
Drizzled in olive oil from the old man’s village.
Olives from a place where they’re no longer farmed.
Whole trees of fruit left to rot, not worth the harvest.

The third: linguine with seafood. Cooked by
Pino, the silent brother who will cry at midnight,
Survivor of an unknown disease which
Renders him mute in the family madhouse.

The forth course is lentils, for money luck.
A plain plateful, served in a green plastic dish.
The Italians eat seconds, storing up wealth.
The old man’s moustache curls up at the edges.

The fifth is fish: baked sea bass stuffed with parsley.
The only course the old man doesn’t like. He leaves half.
He comes from the country. His pictures show the birds
He used to love and his hands made out of cow’s heads.

The sixth course is fruit and seventh is dolci.
A traditional cake made of chocolate and figs.
Zia Angela, his sister, also past seventy, sings
Along to the music and licks her plate clean.

Next is the muscado. Two bottles of sweet pink wine.
One is delicate and new, the other sixteen years old
Thick with sediment. Pino drinks down to the dregs.
His father wears a Christmas hat with flashing ruby lights.

Midnight comes and bombs burst from the balcony.
Rafa’s attacked by the women. He responds with violent
Blows of the balloon. Zia Angela dances a two step.
Another year’s welcomed with kisses and cries of Auguri.

Afterwards, over more wine and the chocolates we brought,
The entertainment. A game called seven and a half, played with
Neapolitan cards. I’m cleaned out of three euros. The old man
Is the bank. He’d keep going til he’d won the lot, if he could.


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