Tomato Pies

Tomato Pies, 25 Cents  by Grace Cavalieri

Tomato pies are what we called them, those days,
before Pizza came in,
at my Grandmother's restaurant,
in Trenton New Jersey.
My grandfather is rolling meatballs
in the back. He studied to be a priest in Sicily but
saved his sister Maggie from marrying a bad guy
by coming to America.
Uncle Joey is rolling dough and spooning sauce.
Uncle Joey, is always scrubbed clean,
sobered up, in a white starched shirt, after
cops delivered him home just hours before.
The waitresses are helping
themselves to handfuls of cash out of the drawer,
playing the numbers with Moon Mullin
and Shad, sent in from Broad Street. 1942,
tomato pies with cheese, 25 cents.
With anchovies, large, 50 cents.
A whole dinner is 60 cents (before 6 pm).
How the soldiers, bussed in from Fort Dix,
would stand outside all the way down Warren Street,
waiting for this new taste treat,
young guys in uniform,
lined up and laughing, learning Italian,
before being shipped out to fight the last great war.

Like a lot of poems I post, this one was an audio podcast from Writer’s Almanac.  And like a lot of poems I post, this one is concrete.  It is specific.  I embrace William Carlos Williams’s maxim, “No ideas but in things.”  As a subscriber to many print literary journals, I spend less and less time rereading poems that do not interest me, that seem merely clever, and offer no real sense of personal experience.  

And here, there is action.  Here are the seeds of a narrative.  Those boys headed to war.  The waitresses and the homes to where they return, their Saturday night romp to brassy bands.  Uncle Joey’s remorse for the previous nights excess nursing a headache and nausea.  And what of Maggie?  Does she gratefully acknowledge her brother’s sacrifice?  Was it worth it after all?  

The numbers guys.  How many knuckles did they break?   What of their grandchildren? And pies, tomato and anchovy.  No ideas but in things.