It started Wednesday in the states, and dear god, I’m hooked — it has my favorite telenovela stars in it, and runs in the vein of La Fea Mas Bella, Las Tontas No Van al Cielo, and Un Gancho al Corazon.
for the 43 members of
Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees
Local 100, working at the Windows on the World restaurant,
who lost their lives in the attack on the World Trade CenterAlabanza. Praise the cook with a shaven head
and a tattoo on his shoulder that said Oye,
a blue-eyed Puerto Rican with people from Fajardo,
the harbor of pirates centuries ago.
Praise the lighthouse in Fajardo, candle
glimmering white to worship the dark saint of the sea.
Alabanza. Praise the cook’s yellow Pirates cap
worn in the name of Roberto Clemente, his plane
that flamed into the ocean loaded with cans for Nicaragua,
for all the mouths chewing the ash of earthquakes.
Alabanza. Praise the kitchen radio, dial clicked
even before the dial on the oven, so that music and Spanish
rose before bread. Praise the bread. Alabanza.
Praise Manhattan from a hundred and seven flights up,
like Atlantis glimpsed through the windows of an ancient aquarium.
Praise the great windows where immigrants from the kitchen
could squint and almost see their world, hear the chant of nations:
Ecuador, México, Republica Dominicana,
Haiti, Yemen, Ghana, Bangladesh.
Alabanza. Praise the kitchen in the morning,
where the gas burned blue on every stove
and exhaust fans fired their diminutive propellers,
hands cracked eggs with quick thumbs
or sliced open cartons to build an altar of cans.
Alabanza. Praise the busboy’s music, the chime-chime
of his dishes and silverware in the tub.
Alabanza. Praise the dish-dog, the dishwasher
who worked that morning because another dishwasher
could not stop coughing, or because he needed overtime
to pile the sacks of rice and beans for a family
floating away on some Caribbean island plagued by frogs.
Alabanza. Praise the waitress who heard the radio in the kitchen
and sang to herself about a man gone. Alabanza.
After the thunder wilder than thunder,
after the shudder deep in the glass of the great windows,
after the radio stopped singing like a tree full of terrified frogs,
after night burst the dam of day and flooded the kitchen,
for a time the stoves glowed in darkness like the lighthouse in Fajardo,
like a cook’s soul. Soul I say, even if the dead cannot tell us
about the bristles of God’s beard because God has no face,
soul I say, to name the smoke-beings flung in constellations
across the night sky of this city and cities to come.
Alabanza I say, even if God has no face.
Alabanza. When the war began, from Manhattan and Kabul
two constellations of smoke rose and drifted to each other,
mingling in icy air, and one said with an Afghan tongue:
Teach me to dance. We have no music here.
And the other said with a Spanish tongue:
I will teach you. Music is all we have.
Ugh.
I can’t decide if I like this new bedtime routine I have going. I’ve been in bed before 11pm every night this week, and then up before 6am every morning. The cats are easily to blame. They wake me up by sitting on my head, or chirruping at the birds outside the window. Okay, so it’s the kitten that does the last one, but minor details. They have me in bed before midnight, and up at a godawful time of day. Part of me doesn’t mind, because it’s kind of nice being up at a time when the neighborhood is actually quiet, but now I can’t even make it through the 5pm news, or even the National News without nodding off — and making it to this time of night? We’re lucky I even manage to get dinner in. I need to start doing meals the way we did them in Mexico — breakfast, large late lunch, and small snack for dinner. It would make more sense since I’m too tired to even think about cooking at night. Cereal for dinner is just not filling.
I feel so frakking old. I just need to tell myself this is good practice for the future when I have a job with normal hours, and I’m no longer masquerading as a sleep deprived grad student. The night owl in me absolutely hates it.
(Courtesy Mary Gonzalez)
Mary Gonzalez told them she was the best candidate to represent them and El Paso voters agreed, but along the way, the 28-year-old doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin broke her share of barriers.
This is a first. Woo!
ashieliz replied to your post: I went shopping for Father’s Day today. I…
My favorite contemporary poet is Martin Espada. He writes a bunch of his stuff in Spanish and then translates it, if you’re looking for other options. He’s amazing.
Totally writing that down for the future — I think I’ll just stick to online shopping for my dad for the near future. The B&N here simply didn’t have a decent selection to choose from.
I should not be allowed in a bookstore with a wallet
