Gypsee-Yo!

AVALANCHES

The women in my family are built like avalanches:
they grow with the fall.

First, they start small
like a molecular dysfunction in the consistency of snow;
then they travel fast,
loaded with the burden of being exceptional,
choosing their path the steeper the better,
and making adjustments as they go;
usually they marry first, and love later.

None of them are whispers,
not even my grandmother, who at forty years of age
lost her voice permanently.

She named us all by whistles
that she blew off to gather us from the landscape
of the matriarchal house at supper time.

The women in my family sing in and out of key
and could not care less,
for as long as they are heard.

Too loud for their own good,
stubborn as salt,
rough as the cutting board,
and irritably proud,
they cook stories and songs persistently,
like the clatter of pots and pans
at the eve of a meal,
because they know too well
that time does not heal silences.

Like cracks in the wall
the women climb up the years
from the floor to the ribs of the roof,
and descend the tree of genealogies
from the branches to the roots.

Their noises are not mysteries, they are proof
that you could slow down entropy,
if you put your lungs to it.

Jonida Beqo a.k.a Gypsee-Yo is a native of Tirana, Albania and currently a resident of Atlanta, Ga. Already a critically acclaimed author of three poetry books and several anthology features in Albania, she has recently surfaced in the poetic scene of the South, where she has lived since 1998. Jonida is a graduate the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where she completed her studies in theatre. In 2001 she founded Lighthouse Productions, an independent theater company that performs works that educate about and empower communities in crisis. In spring of 2004 she was recognized by the American College Theatre Festival and the Kennedy Center for the Arts with the Dell'Arte Diversity Award for her work in her original one woman show "Sinners and Saints; The Women I Know", an internationally performed and critically acclaimed play. In 2006 she competed as a storm poet among many in the Individual World Poetry Slam in Charlotte, NC. She continues to create and tour as a poet and as a performer with a passion for people and the truth; trying to bridge the gab between cultures by rising awareness about universal problems that defy gender, ethnicity and social status.

Gypsee-Yo!