Contributor's Note
Grace McIntire was born—
Grace Valenza McIntire has been writing since—
G.V. Valenza is—
Grace M. Valenza has worked as a beekeeper, bookkeeper, go-go dancer and substitute Latin teacher at a New York City private school. This is her first publication.
Grace Valenza was born in 1931, and raised in Elizabeth, New Jersey. She applied to Bennington because she’d heard Bennington girls could wear blue jeans to class. Everywhere else, girls wore skirts. In college, she became a poet. After graduation, she set out to become a Broadway lyricist. She waited outside stage doors and thrust songs into the hands of anyone who would take them. One singer smiled at her, neatly folding the sheets against his tuxedo before throwing them into a waste can a block away.
Valenza shared a one-bedroom apartment in the Village with five other college co-eds. She slept in the kitchen behind the ice box because she paid the lowest rent. The bathtub was in the kitchen, of course. A girl was always bathing in her room, morning, noon and night. As the water ran, the girls would sing, or sometimes sob. Every morning, Valenza woke with her waitress ankles throbbing, and a new melody thrumming through her blood.
This is Grace V. McIntire’s first publication. She was too old to get very much out of the women’s movement, but who knows...maybe she got something?
G. Valenza is a poet living outside of New York. When her college boyfriend, Rob McIntire, proposed, she said, “Yes. I will marry you. But first I must go to Africa, and then I must go to the Navajo.” She had no idea she’d wanted those things until that instant. During her six months in New Mexico, she interviewed Navajo elders and collected oral histories, but mostly she worked at the reservation daycare, wiping children’s noses and pouring apple juice, the same activities that would consume most of her adulthood. She would have seven children. One would destroy her own life at the age of twenty. Valenza would never make it to Africa, but she would write this poem.
G.M. Valenza has been a poet since second grade, when Tommy Pierce would dip her two copper braids into his inkwell. When she whipped her head to shoot him a glare, ink spattered across her cream-colored blouse like musical notes, like poems.
Grace M. Valenza is a mother of seven. Her first-born, Rose, is irreparably broken by addiction. That is the only truth of Valenza’s life.
Grace Valenza wrote most of her poetry between wash cycles. Look in her laundry room, and you will find a box of labeled “Sock Orphanage.” Inside each sock is a poem.
Grace Valenza has written hundreds of poems; this is her first worthy of publication. She changed her mind about marrying Rob during her time with the Navajo; she stopped replying to his letters. When she was back in the Village less than a week, Rob broke into her apartment with a diamond ring in his pocket. As he climbed through the fire escape, he knocked over her treasured Three Little Pigs figurine, shattering it. Her father, who was chubby like the pigs and adored her, had given it to her for her fifth birthday. (When she was five, she also composed her first sentence, “I am an alligator tamer!”—a work of fiction, of course—and made her father so proud).
Valenza refused Rob’s proposal. She had to go to Africa. Still, she couldn’t resist his cowlick, his eyes the brilliant blue of Superman. She only intended to have a farewell kiss and grope behind the refrigerator because she hadn’t had her Planned Parenthood appointment yet. She certainly could have enjoyed herself that night without him inside her. But men are more limited that way. Later on, she would make sure to tell her daughters that, and warn them what could happen.
“What could happen?” they asked.
“You, that’s what,” she said.
G. Valenza lives outside New York. This is her first published poem. Her greatest accomplishment was that all seven kids loved reading. Once, baby Rose screamed herself eggplant purple because the library was closed. She pounded on the door with her fists. If only Valenza could scream that way.
Poet G. Valenza used to read Goodnight Moon to Rose every night for years. Rose’s favorite lines were “Goodnight nobody,” and “Goodnight mush.” She laughed with such delight at those lines. Rose was the brightest of all the children. She asked the most questions, more than all the others combined. Valenza always thought Rose would become—
G.M. Valenza doesn’t wish that she published younger; she doesn’t have room for more regrets. When Rose dropped out of college, she moved to the Village, not far from Valenza’s old apartment. Rose got a job at a deli. They dressed her up as a pickle, asked her to hand out flyers on the street. There she met the man who introduced her to heroin. When Valenza walked by the deli, her daughter stuffed a flyer into her hand. She looked right through her mother. All the light had gone out from the child’s eyes.
Grace Valenza is an emerging poet in New York. She is the mother of seven. Rose is sixty now, and clean. But her brain is not—she is not—
G. Valenza has been a teacher, a dancer and a poet. She often tries to remember the reasons she didn’t leave her husband earlier. But some nights were happy for Valenza and Rob (she also has trouble remembering those nights). There's one night she does remember: they stayed up late eating potato chips in bed, laughing. At what? At the ridiculousness of their days? (Rob paper-pushing at the insurance company, Grace’s Tupperware parties?) Grace farted under the covers and snapped the blankets towards Rob, and oh, how they laughed!
Grace Valenza wrote most prolifically after having children because they made her ravenous for life. She wanted to eat them up, she loved them so. And they ate her up too.
Grace Valenza lives outside New York. This is her first published poem. She winces to remember that not everyone had winter coats every year. Sometimes food spoiled in the fridge before she could remember to cook it. There was so much to keep track of! Once, when they struggled to pay the mortgage, she bought all seven children brand new ice skates. It was impossible to keep them matched, and the laces from tangling.
When she was trying to sort out the giant pile of skates before a trip to the pond, the children ran amok. They leapt off the couch, bumping heads with loud cracks, rolling on the floor like bowling balls. Rob could have tamed the monkeys by clearing his throat, clapping his hands. Instead, he grabbed one of the pristine ivory, freshly sharpened skates and hurled it into Grace’s thigh. That was the first time. Was it?
Grace Valenza is a poet. Once, she helped twenty-year-old Rose break out of a mental institution. They fled through the back stairwell, setting off alarms, and drove away with tires screeching. They celebrated Rose’s freedom with hot fudge sundaes.
This is Grace Valenza’s first publication. It is a single exhale in a lifetime of labored breathing.
Grace Valenza is an emerging poet. Decades ago, when she had five children, twins on the way, and a near-empty refrigerator, she invited a homeless man named Jake to live with the family. She met Jake outside of the A&P with his beagle, Despair. Jake and Despair lived in their basement for three years, and shared supper with the family every night even though Rob despised him. Jake sometimes blocked Rob’s punches, but never called the cops. Once, Jake stole from ten-year-old Dash’s piggy bank. Then one day he got sober, and landed a job on Wall Street. After Rob died, Jake showed up at the house in an expensive suit and asked Valenza to marry him. She considered it, briefly.
Poet Grace Valenza lives in New York, and this is her first publication. Once, when she burned the meat loaf, Rob pushed her into a mirror. She lost blood. She doesn’t want to think how much. Her wrist was cut close to the artery. She once read that it takes an abused woman seven tries, on average, to leave her partner. Grace was perfectly average in this regard, but she was exceptional in her poetry output. She has seven children, and only six grew up. This is her first published poem.
Grace Valenza left Rob the day after their twins moved out. A couple years later, Rob developed dementia and moved back in. He looked like a little owl. Valenza cared for him at home for another decade until his death. She lives outside New York City, and is writing her first book.
Grace Valenza is an emerging poet in New York, and a mother. Mothers are supposed to help their children become independent. Her sixty-year-old daughter, Rose, lives in a halfway house down the block, and calls home every day to be reminded how to boil water for spaghetti. Rose used to read every book in the library, but now lacks the concentration to read, work, or even watch The Price is Right. “What does this all mean?” she keeps asking Grace. Sometimes, she gets lost walking to Walmart and Valenza must walk her home. How will Rose manage when Valenza dies? The other siblings have no patience for Rose, and they live all over (one is in Germany). The closest one, an hour away, wants nothing to do with Rose. So what will Rose do? What will she do? Valenza simply cannot die.
In her life, poet G. Valenza McIntire doesn’t exist except in relation to others. In her poetry, Valenza can walk alone.
Poet and dreamer Grace Valenza could have published much earlier, but her time is now, this eighty-second year.
Grace Valenza is a poet based in New York. She is also a mother and a wife. This is her first published poem.