Daniela Gioseffi

Beyond the East Gate I listen to the voice of the cricket, loud in the quiet night, warning me not to mistake a hill for a mountain. I need to be alone, in a private house with doors that open only outward safe from strangers who smell of death, where I can draft a universe under my eyelids and let nothing invade it. I want to sing a fugue sounding like the genius of flowers talking to leaves on their stems, to have more concrete meaning than even the, dance of a child in my uterus. I'm a lost and primitive priestess wandering in a walled city of the wrong century. I need to spend thirty years in the desert before I will understand the sun, thirty years at sea to gather the blessing of salt and water. In the back room of my skull a secret dice game determines the rites of my hands before they touch flesh again. I want to reach a peace I've never known, to be an old woman who is very young, a child who is a sage come down from the mountain.

Reprinted by permission of the author, Daniela Gioseffi from her book of poetry: Eggs In The Lake, (Boa Editions, Ltd. Brockport; NY, Copyright © 1979 and 1999 by Daniela Gioseffi.) All rights reserved

Daniela Gioseffi, founding editor of Wise Women's Web and Skylands Writers & Artists Association, is an American Book Award winning author of twelve books from major presses and two grants, one in poetry and one in prose, from The New York State Council for the Arts. Women on War [Simon & chuster/Touchstone: NY, 1990] was also published by Frauenverlag in Vienna in German. On Prejudice: A Global Perspective [Doubleday/Anchor, 1993] won a grant award from The Ploughshares Fund World Peace Foundation and was also published in Tokyo in Japanese. She has published two books of poetry: Word Wounds & Water Flowers[Via Folios at Purdue University, 1995] and Eggs in the Lake [Boa Editions, Rochester, NY, 1980.] Gioseffi has published her work in numerous literary magazines and anthologies, among them The Paris Reveiw, The Nation, Chelsea, Choice, Prairie Schooner, MS and Kaleidescope: Stories of the American Experience [Oxford University Press, 1993.] She reads her work and lectures widely throughout the USA and Europe. She taught at New York University's Publishing Institute, Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, Long Island University and other institutions. She  is a jazz singer, song lyricist and painter. Her feminist novel, The Great American Belly [Doubleday/ Dell, NY, and New English Library, London,1979] was optioned for a screenplay for Warner Bros. by Pulitzer Prize Winning playwright, Michael Christopher, and also published in Croatian in Zagreb. Her recent book of stories & novella [from Avisson Press, Greensboro, NC. 1997] is titled In Bed with the Exotic Enemy. She has won a PEN Syndicated Fiction Award for her story, "Daffodil Dollars," aired on National Public Radio, "The Sound of Words." Daniela has broadcast on many radio and television stations, for example, the BBC at Oxford, National Public Radio in Washington, D.C., Pacifica's WBAI, NY. A widely published literary critic who writes regularly for American Book Review, The Hungry Mind Review, Independent Publishing, and The Small Press Review, she is published on line at a variety of sites and is a member of The National Book Critics Circle and PEN American Center.