History Lesson For Friday/by: Joseph Papaleo

The Puerto Rican girls are blond already,

having given up their darkness of good frescoes

to look like what they were told they should

to get ahead, avoid being overlooked.

This now leaves the Peruvians, Chileans, Koreans,

Salvadorans, Dominicans, Vietnamese, Jordanians,

Pakistani, Egyptians still in their natural colors

and styles because they don’t know yet

that Marilyn came out of the bowels

of jean Harlow for them.

But soon they will seek salvation

with yellow rinse

and try to become tall and pall and titless:

and if they succeed they lose their bodies,

and if they succeed they lose their souls.

---

On my trip on April 2018 to Barronissi  Italy to stay  in Casa Della Poesia which belongs to my translator Raffaella Marzano and her husband Sergio , I met William Papaleo an American/Italian artist. He gave me a copy of his late father Joe Papaleo ,s poetry book called “Picasso AT 91”  . Upon returning to San Francisco i have read the poems and this particular poem reminded me of the shock i was experiencing many years ego from change of hair color on my Iranian sisters all over the world specially the day i saw our very famous late Iranian poet who was giving reading in Berkeley with shocking blond hair!! That day i was thinking if Hafez was alive had to change many lines of his poetry about beautiful dark, night ridden tresses to beautiful blond hair !!! But may be if we get closer in  color, knowledge and wealth we all can live with more peace and less tension.

---

Joseph Papaleo (1925–2004) was an Italian American novelist,and poet and academic.^[1]

He grew up in The Bronx. He graduated from Sarah Lawrence College, from Columbia University with an M.A., and from the University of Florence with a Ph.D.^[2]

He taught at Sarah Lawrence College.^[3]

He lived in Bronxville, New York,^[4] and Oldsmar, Florida. His work appeared in Harper’s,^[5] The New Yorker,^[6] Paris Review, Paterson Literary Review.