What Granma Says, es La Lay.

Granma’s smile. That sarcastic, bitter kind of hiss she tongues and out the corner of her eyes brushes you away saying, “Sacase a bañar.” Her joking dismissal of everything not Catholic and in Spanish. Shoots down smart-aleck, know-it-all backtalk, cool kid tongues, soaps out English bad words, and inserts Spanish ones. “Carajo, habla en español, en la escuela ingles, en la casa español.” You always cut us down with the same set of sarcasm, same sass and harsh sound, just not in English, “solo español.” To be Mexican Chicago, migrated your Mexico barrio to Logan Square, apartments along the way to the house on Artesian, and then move back to Mexico, run away from the cold. Old bones need to burry where they were seeded.

Dismissal of everything not Catholic and Spanish, but learned and keep the prayers and worships, the Word in Latin. Always still cover your head at church. You are the Eve that sold Mexico to Cortez, so cover your head. She is Indian skin and eyes of water. “Don’t drink the water.” Always, “No tomas el agua.” We learn to keep ourselves from self and earth. Industry and America taught your Mexico how to suck everything, last drop of the soil like long Indian braid hair and corn husk. Suck everything, last drop out of glass bottled Coca-Cola collections on shelves of new many tiendas taking over your smoke filled streets. Coca-Cola for water to drink in commerce, consumer society, capitalism in your third world. When does priest preach that message against that sin? Then I’ll go to church too. Dedicated walk from church to home, home to church to make community. Walking quick, cutting through the noise and smoke, keep head covered.

Abuela's breath. Air out your kitchen. Heat of your hands like tops of stoves. Cover yourself to keep warm. Wrap up tight, socks and wool skirts you made yourself. A blouse you made from a flower print fabric you made the curtains with the same. You match your kitchen. Frilly apron always first thing on after prayer. Prayer like sweater to keep you warm, keeps your arms from falling off. Sun rises with your dawn, yawn me new day bendiciones before I can leave the house. You bring in the sun push those curtains aside with psalms and platitudes. Feed the birds. Kill the chickens. Cook our favorites and love our smiles. Don’t serve me Granma. I can serve myself. Like you say, “¿No tienes manos? Haz lo tu mismo. Eres Capaz.” Yes I am. So I do. You taught me to do, so you can sit and not always serve us, me, men, daughters and grandkids. I teach myself how, to teach you to not have to.

The rough of soft skin, something like dough you’ve kneaded your arms into flabs of used to be strong, working class arms melted, cleaning bathrooms and cooking for nuns and doing their dishes, laundry, on your knees scrubbing the floors is prayer. Learn and unlearn the points of Catholicism. Brown here and brown there and still cleaning up the white people’s messes. The earth they’ve shat in the very water to drink. “No tomas el agua,” you always taught me. So I don’t. I drink horchata and boiled tap only if a have to. Coca-Cola, agua con sal, un tea con avena cuando estoy enfermo. Your brown flavored remedies, kept pressed leaves of all kind, collections of medicines in your purse, wrapped in napkins leaves and petals, magic you condemn and practice. Tissue when we sneeze, keep quiet in church, en la casa de dios. “But Granma, you can’t keep god in just one house.” Faith like knickknacks you’ve clutter collected compulsive disorder on your selves. Faith like leaves to heal everything stuffed in your purse. Teach me to appreciate thorns like you do.

Assembly line responses to the world. Rote readings to the world and ways to condemn your daughters, where did you go wrong? Self pitying, Catholic guilt Granma. Tight hold on your house like espoons made de plata. The taste stuck in my mouth. Missmatched rummage sale, found in the dumpster, back of the house alley collection of chairs in your kitchen. Assembly line day of family and candles. Tiendas and slight drop of sweat dripping down face, stuck in your eye. The kitchen is the warmest place in our house. It’s where we all go to keep warm these Chicago winters. Scarves and sweaters you pull us tight, still holding espatula, when the boiler breaks.

Tamales for Christmas and my birthday. Watch you pull the chicken from the bones, blood on frill apron. The chicken heads somewhere buried in the yard, or did it slip into the soup? The dog, named Taco, chewing a bone. A feather stick to your skirt. Poor chicken, never had a chance, and your pajaritos cantando-ing in their hand made cages, many colors and kinds of canaries, an egg in a nest, the spell of blood broth. Mix the mole. Chocolate never washed off your finger tips. Assembly line at Marshal Fields, Godiva chocolates you never tasted, never touched your tongue.

Only smell of your chocolate skin incense. Lingering spiced air at misa, your kitchen. Where you create yourself, tight yourself around rosary and beaded prayers, bead pray bead, day and shroud, cover your head and keep warm. Factory your day to keep us warm. This is your law. To keep us Catholic and speaking Spanish. Your creed like Apostles. Hot tongues, tacos de lengua. Tight our heads and hands on like dolls. Twist and snap us together just right. Practice what we preach. Actions and words. Sew up my frayed end pant legs when they get to baggy, draggin ‘n on the floor, under my shoes. Call me “cantinflas” Complain about my long hair. Dress us for misa, tell me to pull up pants, tuck in shirt, walking up cold stone steps. Pull heavy door, keep winter out the church. Dip fingers in ice holy water. Sprinkle and sign of the cross. I wonder what the water tastes like, many hands and washed away sins. What does sin taste like? Gum stuck at the bottom of the pool.

No tomas el aqua, granma. Don’t drink. Drink.

Last Word Latina, II

Often confused for a white girl walking down Western. She glares at everyone, defying them, enticing them, beckoning them all to define her, confine her into one box and packager her as a gringa, as a yuppy, as the gentrifying white girl that she isn’t, coming to take away all the brown in this city and erect condos in a grave yard city of used to be culture and community. But she is not white girl 'cause she's Puerto Rican, right? But she is white girl 'cause she talks "right" and isn't curly hair and dark dark brown for you, right? But she's not white girl 'cause she grew up Chicago, Spanish, and Humboldt Park, right? But she is white girl 'cause light skin means Spanish blood and Europe and money, right? She is not white girl for you today, though you’d like to turn her into one because she listens to punk rock and indie bands. She listens to so much more, she is an island and country and world of music and words and ideas and beings that you could never comprehend. She is whatever you want to paint her light brown skin to be.

At the Puerto Rican parade she is fire red eyes burning through the chest of a drunk man in the moon light. He is pressing up on her. Telling her she has a nice ass, how’d she get “that Puerto Rican ass” and oh she’s fine. How’d she get that Puerto Rican ass? As if her ass could be the rounding off of ocean and earth, the scent of suffering and smiling, migrations and identities mixed and confused slavery, vulnerable and seductive violation, governments, religion and politics of an island so far away. And sex, all about sex and eroticizing everything about her, even her short haircut that looks like a boy’s for his fantasies. He is drunk and you can see the center of her earth steaming out her eyes, molten hot core, her being, every sense of dignity, indignity, right and righteousness erupting from her clenched teeth and eyes. She blinks a calm dismissal at him and motions to tell him off with her fist.

And now she isn’t Puerto Rican ass anymore. He looks at her light brown face and through his drunken eyes thinks she’s Asian. “What the fuck you doing here Chinita?” Dis the Puerto Rican parade not China Town. Get the fuck outa Humboldt Park.” And now her fire storm is swirling, swarming brush fire destroying Chicago for a second time. She has always had a bad temper. Tonight there was enough alcohol and empanadas stuffed in her to let out the worst in her. And she steps up to him. She becomes years of oppression, of woman not speaking against the piercing eyes of men like this. She becomes a movement, a liberation unto herself. And she raises herself off the ground. She is not a tiny girl anymore. She grows wings and horns and calls upon the spirits of ancestry, the dead of her world to eat this little man. Devour him within his own lust and ignorance. Turn him into his liquor breath vapor, to evaporate with an offering y un baño. She washes herself of his sticky words, wipes away his stench and sex. And she is stronger than he is.

We pull her away from him before this becomes something worst. We try to calm her and distract her. We pull her away from him before she erupts, implodes and we have to explain to the city that we aren’t feminist terrorist planting bombs at parades to prove a point. We aren’t always indignant and militant. We don’t hate these men or every man. And we pull her away wishing she could have hit him. Wishing we weren’t all cowards. Wishing we didn’t have to fear for her safety and ours and the possibility of inciting a race and class and sex and everything riot in the middle of a nice summer night.

We’re back at her apartment and she’s a yuppy to this confused neighborhood for you and everyone again. And we listen to Celia Cruz and and then some Sleater Kinney and eat some left over chicken wings and drink Coronas. Her fire smothered once again. We should have let her go off on him. We should have let her speak loudly that she is not an object or an ideal, she is not the embodiment of anything other than herself. Why must she be the revolution, why must she be everything that the world isn’t, all the time. Why can’t she just go to a parade, laugh and not be aware of every influence and consequence and negotiate between her class, sex and race for you.

Those words stuck in her head as we drink the rest of the night away, trying to forget ourselves and the world. “Get out of Humboldt Park.” Get out of her Puerto Rican self. Get out of the home you were raised in. Get out of your sex and skin and education. Get out of your class. Get out of your orientation. Get out of your music and books and friends. Get out of your ideas. Get out of yourself, your hair, your eyes, your ass. Get out of this world because we don’t know where to put you. What part of this city to segregate you’re kind to. What kind to?

She sleeps and has a nightmare about grass around her on fire rising up over her. And the ocean is just out of her reach. And her reflection is out of reach. And the fire smells like a drunkard, and whispers, “Get out. Get out. Get out, now.” But she can’t and she screams.

Last Word Latina

Today is last word Latina who personalizes everything. Opinionated on everything, and argues about things that no one is really arguing over. When the other person isn’t arguing just saying something different or trying to lay the debate she made up to rest to continue the lecture or discussion.

Needs a pill to fix this she can’t seem to keep from ignoring. Over exhaustion and stress she piles up sleep deprivation like her dept for school and living. Whose parents disowned her for being a lesbian and deciding to go to college. And they haven’t decided which they’re more offended by. Her sex or her leaving so many sisters and dishes. For education over kitchens. And here she is so eager to invite me over to her independence and room in a coop and cook and laugh and not be reminded.

Only afraid of father and god, or god the father, or her father, god? She forgets now. It’s been so long. Took care of god by becoming an atheist. But can’t stop believing in fathers, like anthropomorphic mythological owners of everything and the future with thick belts and loud roaring snores that make the thunder she can’t sleep because of.

Quiver in Latina voice, pinches, pricks soft cracks and sings sighs. Is a moan to be a Mexican girl. And moan takes two vowels to makes its own sound. voice. sex. she writes without gender. Today was not loud in class because she wasn’t even listening when she tried to because today was so much poetry, thought out of fingers and obsessions. Desperation today wants this book she is to be written and shelved. Burned and boiled. Eaten. Shitted out and on. Story to run from blood like stabbing, eyes out ears to let go pulled and punched back in kind of book. Today is aggravating hiccup poetry and heart slow up esophagus. A cough to wheeze grind throat and air and hiss and choke over. Her eternal in-betweens. Work and trying not to faint. Keep it together.

Notebook in her chest lets the writing get thicker when it needs to be closed shut, wrapped with wires to keep it from bursting confetti of printed pages, bloated binding with words in life boat papers escaping sinking stories, coma and quote people jumping from burning binding, consonant children running from perfect lines, demonic boys as girls as boys howling out isles from first gruel communion church where she doesn't even try to compete with that word. Echo hollow church thunder tortillaed in her. Content at the end of day with microwave veggie wraps, empty thoughts and glass she stains her windows peace and power. No doubt debate pressing in her dark comforting quiet.