Initiation

GABRIELLA IACONO

I was carried out in a crinoline gown,
barely old enough to stand, a baby bride

in dove-belly white. A woman cradled
my knobby head and soaked my silk booties

limp. This was the first river I gave my body.
A man rubbed rosewater on the blank

of my forehead, incantations twisting
from his mouth. He thumbed some oil

across my brow, cleansed me of foremother.
I was told I am a cutting, a foremother.

A gold cup anointed me of the unordered
water. This was my preparation and claim

for my return to clay. I was blessed
and bath-capped for whatever I had not done,

my toes still webbed, my cord stump still
yoked. I was still perfect, still blameless as you.

Gabriella Adriana Iacono is a writer, artist, and educator from Staten Island, New York. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Southeast Review, SAND, minnesota review, Defunkt Magazine, Portmanteau LDN, and elsewhere. Her poem "Land Erasure" was commissioned by Aurora Picture Show and Public Poetry Houston for the 2022 REELPoetry Festival. Iacono holds an MFA in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston, where she was a C. Glenn Cambor Fellow. She currently lives in Houston, Texas, where she teaches creative writing with Writers in the Schools and is completing her first collection of poetry.