Prospect Park, Seattle, Spring 2008

Prospect Park, Seattle, Spring 2008

I remember when I went to that park in Seattle, a cold day in June when I wanted it to be warmer. Samm had told me it was a beautiful spot, so I took the afternoon off and rode my bike across the Seattle city to the coast, dropping down through the dunes and sat on logs watching the waves of the Puget Sound come in. Cold water, late afternoon, and I swam, or tried. Only my knees, shorts getting wet and creeping up my thighs.

My head hurt it was so cold, the sun setting. I rode back in the dark, shivering with the breeze, lost at ties in long residential neighborhoods. I sent Samm a text message saying how pretty it was, lying.

I was lonely. I wanted to share something with her, with somebody, so I rode my bike and went further away from everyone I knew just to see the sun set. To be in Nature.

But Nature is not that way. Nature is not solitary, and neither is Love. They are communion, interdependence even when we cannot see it, hands reaching under the table to hold each other. They are not lonely bare feet on dark stones in cold water. I was groping for love. She never messaged me back, and I went home to eat and sleep, sad.

The Vendors

THE VENDORS

The vendors are all old men, pushing brightly painted carts through the cemetery with

Metal bells announcing ice cream and snow cones.

We are crowded around the grave, the pastor leading hymns, women singing, eyes closed.

It is hot, the sun beading my forehead with sweat.

A young girl is captivated by the rituals for the dead. She stares.

They sing, ¨If we live for God, we die for God.¨

A son leans against another grave, with a cement cross supporting him, and cries.

The first time I came here, the public cemetery in Chalchuapa,

A drunk and maybe homeless man ran up to me. I was with two friends from Seattle,

Showing them around my new home in El Salvador, and we were sharing a can of soda.

¨The can,¨ he yelled, and thinking he was thirsty, I offered him a drink.

¨No,¨ he said, impatient, and explained he wanted the can to recycle for cash.

Poverty, I thought.

My friends and I walked on, a little shaken but pretending

To be stronger than the moment.

We are young still, and we think we can overcome things like that with convictions.

I would like to.

I think about death, how this must have been like my grandma´s funeral in Kansas.

The pastor talks of the end of times, dust to dust, death as a celebration of life in Christ

And a little girl walks to buy a snow cone. The old man unwraps the block of ice from the cloth

Shaves it, and transferring the ice to the Styrofoam cup, his big hands drop the ice.

He starts again, the ice melting on the sidewalk.

Cherry syrup, chocolate ice cream, sodas,

The kids eat it all, the people file out

The pastor tired, sweating, done now.

And as the young men shovel dirt on a bright Sunday morning, burying their uncle or

Grandfather or father,

The bells of ice cream and snow cones sing on,

Death forgotten.

Nico

nico´s father

i am not sure even of his name.

I met him once in a small village off the side of a road

Heading towards Haiti in the middle of sugar cane fields

In the middle of a valley of dark rich soil.

He was the father of Nico, a friend and roommate I had for

One summer in the Dominican Republic, I a volunteer in a

Coastal pueblo helping with literacy.

We had gone to visit his family. Beforehand he tells me, ¨My family has

Nothing.¨ Poverty was exotic to me, so I welcomed seven

Communal latrines, no water, a cinderblock church with

Kriol bibles, houses of sticks and palm fronds, boiled

Plantain and yucca for dinner.

We went to visit, to walk around, to meet the families sitting

On porches, the young men standing in circles smoking cigarettes, their

Black skin and lean bodies glistening in the night.

His father spoke little Spanish. He gave me his hand when

We walked inside his house, a small room in what once was

A dormitory for Haitians who cut sugar cane on the plantation of a

Santo Domingo aristocrat.

He gave me his hand and it was a jagged rock of calluses

And creases and I felt a life so tired.

He turned on the radio and Nico and I sat, not talking to his father,

Who slumped in front of us, weary.

We got up and walked some more, everything on my lips now—

Blood sweat dirt chickens rice rain sugar fire. I no longer wanted to know

His friends, their stories, their anger. We slept.

In the morning we swam in the river and got on the bus and went

Back across the valley to the beach and the pool and we drank

Presidente beer and I occasionally remember that night when I feel as

Lonely and lost as Nico´s father who cuts sugar cane and tends fields and

I am a world away.

His hands were so thickly callused from the machete,

His body bent. Nico and I walked the concrete steps to his house,

Jagged with rebar and holes, the sounds of his neighbors fighting, cooking,

Making love, mosquitoes buzzing, children crying, bachata music, a woman

Selling fried bananas. Head bent, waiting for dawn, the night air washing over

Him, over me.

It is the same sky, I think, here in El Salvador.

And my father? I look to the stars and find him tired like me, in a room with The radio on.

Language

LANGUAGE

Who are you listening to?

someone says...

Thanks to God now I can send my child to school.

POVERTY! IGNORANCE! SILLY BRAIN WASHING RELIGION!

gringos who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps say.

Gracias a Dios hoy puedo mandar a m´ijo a escuela.

REPRESSION! CORRUPTION! INEQUALITY! BONE-BREAKING LABOR!

centroamericanos who eat the USAID corn that drowns their markets scream.

Eggs

"Egg!"

A radio call-in show giving away cartons of eggs in San Salvador.

You must answer three questions, each one with the

answer of ¨Egg.¨ People call because they are

hungry, or poor, or looking for something free.

I have no money and it makes me tired.

I got letters once from my friend´s seventh grade class

in Houston, Texas. The students tell me about their lives, their friends,

that they think it is a good thing what I am doing.

I have a friend.

She is a smart girl, graceful in many ways.

Her father crossed the desert for five straight days, the blisters he must have had,

and arrived in New York City. He came back in an airplane.

Changed after five years of Manhattan construction work, he drinks now. Has another woman. A former church leader now a bolo.

A dream of his daughter´s, to go to the university, on the rocks.

He drinks it down. Desperation from the poverty he couldn´t get out of,

his wife will leave soon and the kids will go, or maybe some will stay

and he will go again to the United States because there is nothing more

he has patience for.

I eat six tortillas with beans and am still hungry. I watch these people live, love, lose, move on, and I know I am not adapted. I still cannot write poetry

in Spanish, in their language. I am still afraid to try.

But this song does not have to be a sad one.

Ser/Estar

SER/ESTAR

"Let me ask you a question," he says. "But don’t get mad.” Okay.

"Is it true that you took sandwiches on Thursday when we were celebrating Día del Niño in the school?”

Yes, I say, seeing the trap is laid. Yes. "Who gave you permission?”

***

Yeah, I did give the little girl three sandwiches. I saw there were extras and I gave them to the hungry girl.

And I know if I would’ve asked you would’ve given. I know. I wasn’t thinking of permission. I just took them and it was probably messed up because you all gave fifty cents of your own money, just for bread, mayo, cabbage.

I also gave two to two students who walked here to see me.

He stomps off, angry at my attempt to pay him back, but more than anything, he’s faking, and happy because he knows he’s won and that I feel incapable of a remedy.

The kid is smart, but angry. Smart, but sick. Smart, but alone, lonely. Dead dad. Poor mom. New neighborhood. Few friends.

I was thinking of the girl’s bloated stomach. Fuck you.

***

They sometimes fear telling me things for fear I will get angry or react strongly, calling me enojado.

Never before in my life have I been labeled angry. More so because to say, "es enojado,” is to say, "he’s an angry person.” I get angry, yes. Am intense, sure, I have my convictions, but am not an angry person.

Salvadorans are known as guanacos because of how they carry themselves in front of authority: head down, no questions, meek. I am strong, committed, combative for a cause.

So they say I am an angry person and it hurts because soy enojado means I am locked in, no changing. I am/will be an angry person. Forever.

***

Spanish is different than English. In English you can change that—there’s no difference in "to be,” a temporary (estar) and a permanent (ser) like there is here. I will use that to help me: in the States I can always change who I am, develop, new! Here, I am permanently loco, enojado, chele, calmado, dundo. I cannot change these things.

This is damaging to kids who hear, sos enojado, sos loco, sos burro. You are a stupid/angry/stubborn person. There is no changing the truth of the comment. You are this way. Not: you are acting or being this way. You are equal to, always.

I learned ser/estar in day two of Spanish class eight years ago, but now it hurts to think of the division.

Kids here in my village tell me: somos relajos. We are loose and relaxed, and thus incapable of behaving well. Ever.

Soy tranquilo. But I, who have been angry, am always an angry person.

***

The kid is one of those I would like to work with because he is capable, (at times or always?), of a lot.

The little girl is hungry. I gave her three sandwiches because it (always) hurts for me to see her stomach, her dirty hands, her eyes fixing on my loose dollar bills on my desk. This is always.

I am tired, almost always, of being poor with meek people who are very oppressed and do not speak up. ¿Soy cansado de ser pobre? Does it work?

***

So I am sorry about taking food that was not mine. I recognize my error. I am happy here, but sad, too. And maybe this sadness and my desperation to put a little more fat on a needy girl, is me being enojado, forever, or just now, at poverty. But these kids (me too?) are just the casualties. Forever or just now? Ser or estar?

They Will Love You With Their Food

THEY WILL LOVE YOU WITH THEIR FOOD

It is not what you think.
It is kind, powerful, silent deep river.
It is tamales with chippilin leaves or frijoles wrapped carefully in banana leaves
Tortillas always hot in the morning hours as light crops above the volcanoes
Before leaving to work, or go to pueblo, or for no other reason
Than that they care for you.

It is their love and it will take six months, probably longer, probably your life, to
Figure out they love you with food, with the time it takes and the effort and you send E-cards Anyways so what the hell do you know of their world.

It is their love because it is what they control, have, can offer you. A glass of coke and Salpores if you go for a visit, stopping by to chat.
Six plates of chicken on Christmas Eve. Countless glasses of horchata, fresco, café! More café! Sweet bread! Mountains of it! Frijoles fritos, sancochados, enteros! Queso, duro y fresco! Crema! Sopa de pollo, de carne de res! A thousand pupusas de mora, de frijol con queso,de frijol, de papa, de chicharron, de pollo, served with cortido y salsa! For graduations, birthdays, quinceñeras pollo guisado, horneado, empanizado, accompanied by rabano, berro, arrozcito frito. But always, in the end, frijoles y tortillas in the morning. The tortillas always hot.

To the point you grow accustomed to eating even
When you know it will make you sick because it is the least you can do to love back the people Who would
Who do
Give you everything.

The corn they plant, weed, tend, their lifeline, the rays of sun from the Mayan gods and you begin to see the humblest people you know give you everything, their love
And it translates and hits you that they always talk about the poor fuck them these people are different and you don´t want to leave because there still is so much to learn but there is my life to devote to it because as long as the Mayan gods allow
She will give me the hottest tortillas and her love will be strong , will be my muscles, my hair, my body, my soul, and her love will penetrate and become me and I will carry her love forever and at first I said I couldn´t stand tortillas.

How I eat them now with such hunger! Such need!