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"Abuela was my bridge to the past, my culture"

4/4/2020

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Rinconcito

​is a special “little corner” in Somos en escrito for short writings: a single poem, a short story, a memoir, flash fiction, and the like.

Autumn (para Abuela)

by Eric Noel Perez
​After divorcing my grandfather (for the second time),
my grandmother packed a bag,
scooped up my mother and uncle,
and left Puerto Rico headed for the Bronx.
 
She touched ground in 1959, and I imagine she was like
the Latina version of Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz:
a stranger in a strange world
 
swept away by a tornado
of failed love, and broken vows,
 
hoping to find her yellow brick road
somewhere between 144th Street and Willis Avenue.
 
For herself. For her family.
   And eventually, for me.
 
When she arrived
light posts greeted her instead of palm trees,
parking meters hemmed in the new world
like iron stalks of cold sugar cane,
 
and for the first time in her life
she encountered the hands of autumn.
 
They were brisk, multi-colored hands that cracked
as they moved across her unaccustomed skin,
 
hands filled with more doomsday fire,
more foreboding than she’d ever dreamt
during her hot, San Juan nights.
 
Her dresses and sleeves grew longer
     as the daylight hours shortened,
palomas metamorphosized into garbage picking pigeons,
 
the deep, dark red of the leaves reminded her
of Caribbean twilight, and childbearing.
 
When my parents bought a house on Long Island
she cried.
My father asked, “Doña
, que te pasa?”
She said she was going to miss me.
She didn’t know she was coming with us.
She cried even more when he told her.
 
The suburbs agreed with Abuela more than the city:
less noise, more birds, backyard barbecues and hammock naps.
Every night in summer
the crickets faithfully fingered
their miniscule fiddles,
 
and though they certainly weren’t coquis singing her to sleep,
she still appreciated their song.
 
Abuela was my bridge to the past, my culture,
built on girders of Spanish music and Bible verses,
family recipes, and orange fingers
that smelled of onion and Sazón,
 
a reminder that in spite of the Heavy Metal and Hip Hop I’d adopted,
mine was an inheritance of ocean music.
  
When I turned 16, she began to change.
It was little things at first, like, she’d forget that
I’d already eaten, and another plate of rice and beans would
                magically appear before me.
 
Important dates began slipping from her memory,
then the ingredients to her favorite dishes
as though bathed in too much Crisco.
 
Next to go were the names of old friends,
 
then the lyrics to her favorite boleros
            (Daniel Santos must have felt like
a jilted lover).
 
She started talking to herself often,
answering strange questions
from invisible inquisitors,
 
            even befriending her own reflection in the mirror,
sharing perfume with the unfamiliar face
that smiled sheepishly back at her).
 
Soon, all the attributes that composed my Abuela
fell from her in deciduous fashion,
stripping her of comprehension, of identity,
 
of life.
 
By the time the Alzheimer’s was in full season
she stood before us all diminished,
a photo negative of the woman I once knew,
 
naked as a tree in the heart of November:
 
 
limbs gaunt and knotted with age,
 
her memories scattered helter-skelter
like desiccated leaves around her slippered feet.
 
We moved her back to Puerto Rico in 1991
so she could die
with the touch of a familiar sun on her face.
 
Towards the end I hopped on a plane
and went to visit her in the nursing home.
 
She was sitting in a rocking chair on a veranda
behind a metal gate meant to protect the residents
from wandering off into traffic, into the death filled sea;
 
         her vacant eyes were like hollow conches,
       ribbons of light slipped through the iron bars.
 
                  She didn’t remember my name.
 
Abuela sat in silence as I held her frail, bony hand,
the same hand that had rubbed Vicks on my chest
      when bronchitis struck with a vengeance,
 
the same hand that dropped caramelitos into my pockets
              and loose change in my open palm
    whenever the ice cream man came tolling his bell.
 
Holding that hand now was like holding an old eagle’s claw.
My mother painted her gray nails, and cried.
 
I kissed her cheek over and over again, knowing
this time she was the one who would be moving,
and that I couldn’t follow (not yet, anyway).
 
As I stood to leave, large, warm tears stood in my eyes
as her eyes grew heavy with gloaming stars.
 
Gradually her lips closed, quietly, slowly,
    like the petals of a nocturnal flower.
 
Not long afterwards we received word Abuela had passed.
 
It was late April.
Spring was casting its colorful gems to and fro.
At her funeral I cast words of gratitude on her casket
                   like amapola petals.
 
October came. My first autumn without her.
The days still shrunk, the sun still cooled,
the wind still stripped the trees.
 
My mother, in an homage to hearts and healings,
made Abuela’s rice and beans.
They were good. Really good. But something was missing.
 
The clouds broke upon the cold, blue sky like waves on the Atlantic.
 
Wherever she was, a piece of me was with her,
and her with me, and I swore to myself that
no matter how much I loved New York
I wouldn’t forget Puerto Rico,
 
that no matter how much I dug the sound of an electric guitar
I’d hold a space on my heart’s altar for the cuatro.
           
Today, I have each foot firmly planted in two soils.
I taste life as I paint it, with two palettes,
 
and though much of the world may want me to choose a flag,
I have no problem straddling the border.
 
Driving to the supermarket with the radio on
my ears are filled with the clatter of synthesizer drums.
But it doesn’t drown out the timbale beating in my blood.

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Eric Noel Perez, born of Puerto Rican parents in New York City, lived in the Bronx until he was 6 when the family moved to Port Jefferson Station on Long Island. He now lives in Bay Shore, NY. He attended SUNY Geneseo, completed a bachelor’s in English and Secondary Education, then later at Stony Brook University, earned a master’s degree. An English teacher for 25 years, he has also been a yoga instructor, motivational speaker, and non-denominational ordained minister. Last year, he published three books: Sweet Caroline: A Book of Love Poems, Rambling: Soul Searching on Long Island’s North Shore, and a children’s book titled, God Is.
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"...being an immigrant’s daughter"

3/15/2020

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Political cartoon from the Chicago Tribune from 1914, Wikipedia.


​​Two poems from the colonies

By María Lysandra Hernández

oppression: how disney channel
is the best form of neocolonialism

in my high school, we rose in an ocean of plaid skirts and blue vests and placed our palms
over our hearts and tried to stand still, despite the itch of our noses and the passing of notes,
to listen to our anthems before assemblies, meetings, and model UN competitions;

my World History professor told us once before assembly to note the differences between
anthems,
and their hidden words between high notes we made fun once we paraded out the auditorium; I
too,

know the rockets had a red glare–yet my singer’s voice, inherited from my mariachi father, sings
it best; whereas my father’s anthem reveres Mexican cannon’s booms, and the US’s prides
“unlikely” war triumphs, my mother’s La Borinqueña praises the beauty uncovered–like a
bride’s once

unveiled–when finally dis-covered by conquistadors who had never seen such splendor, nor such
beaches, where they could settle and disseminate onto fertile land the will and command of the

Catholic queen; it starts off small, you see, taking symbols (like our uniforms) and calling it
mundane to not stand out but conform among the sea of historical anthems that inflate chests
with pride; and we’re taught how it’s a privilege to sing our anthem now since we couldn’t
before due to

laws like la Ley de Mordaza, law 53 of 1948, that gagged and killed those who carried our azul
celeste flags, those who sang our real anthem and songs, and those who even thought of
breathing

independent air, so now we should be grateful to be able to remember Columbus only wanted
our land for its beauty, be grateful that el Grito de Lares was unsuccessful in reaching
independence, be grateful we sing the United States’ anthem and we can sing the Hannah
Montana theme song

in perfect English and recognize Mickey Mouse before knowing the revolutionary anthem by
Lola Rodríguez de Tió and recognizing our own fallen leaders, we should be grateful that we
receive

American media content across the ocean, too, despite being disenfranchised from voting for the
next CEO of this American franchise, we should be grateful for the orange pedophillic hands that

handed us over paper towels to mop up rivers in our houses, we should be grateful, we should be
grateful, we should be grateful, we should be grateful, we should be grateful, we should be
grateful

the abc’s of being an immigrant’s daughter

agua de jamaica paints my lips and mouth
blood-red, like i’m dead. i find nostalgic
comfort in the broken plastic cup that is
dribbling, dripping down its berry-flavored
esperanza. recall the square i circled around as a
fumbling child? silly child, mumbling the longgone name for a patriarchal figure–broken masthead of family. we were decapitated after the
infernal heat of the immeasurable trek that
jostles spirits. odyssey on desert–not sea–seeking for any
kind hands to feed, caress. yet, only orange ones that
like to poison wells, appear with their ‘oh, wells,’
‘maybe later,’ and ‘bad hombres’ rhetoric. they
never try the exercise of recognizing countries that lie on
opposing continents. why would the people’s president
partake in any education other than indoctrination? why
question the binary of them vs. us? white vs. brown?
really, children of all ages, of all different faces,
seem to have fun: no parents allowed, sleeping in
tenebrous cages, tossing and turning over the hope of the
un-american dream. the eagle saves from villainous
vipers in deserts that slither across illegally
with evil intentions; yet no one mentions the
xoloitzcuintlis’ trips to chaperone the children who
yearned for golden gates, a familiar embrace–
zócalos are now too far to feel like home.

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​María Lysandra Hernández is a BA Writing, Literature and Publishing student with a minor in Global and Post-colonial Studies at Emerson College. She is currently the Head of Writing at Raíz Magazine, Emerson College’s bilingual and Latinx publication. For more poetry, you can find her on instagram at @marialysandrahern.
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My loss I call "isla"

5/23/2019

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​Rinconcito

 is a special little corner in Somos en escrito for short writings: a single poem, a short story, a memoir, flash fiction, and the like.

Benediction: Three Poems

By Eric Morales-Franceschini

Isla ​

My loss I call “isla” 
my teacher, too 
for to fall prey to it 
is to forfeit every right to grow old with the devil 
And say, yes, this is what it is to be sated with life  

But woe to this trigueño body and to 

every hymn 
that conjures a love lost on nearby shores, borne on tempestuous waters 

for memory holds at this and every other lonely hour 

—innocent of all history 
bound to a desire more fecund than Atabey, 
less merciful than Juracán 

for it defies all names and, thereby, all tenability 

walks across warm sand, 
a mother’s smile, 
and a century 
older than blood the scent of rum  

nor does it know any end, sees only the color flamboyán 

and blossoms every nightfall, as does the coquí’s coy song    

if only I knew other names   

—less sublime 
indeed: less generic 
to keep at bay this perversely welcomed hour 

If only I had the decency to say no 

and heed to a reality as dry as bone 

If only, that is, the Virgen would make me righteous 

just this once
and let me say, with impunity: I miss you

Benediction   ​

The tongue is a peculiar and amnesiac foil 
which forgets that not all is bound by the color spic 

for flesh and its miscellanea do speak loudly

but a logic older than the corpus knows that 
even the ventriloquist is no rival 
for the criterion of the “native” 

who, after all, could afford to loiter about in editorial time
or seek asylum in the quintessential and the vulgar
when all must be said here and now    

inevitably a stutter confesses, “I’m a fraud” 
and you are laid bare to a world 
that knows 
not 
how to listen for a new canto  

either belatedly, or hastily
we fall prey to a grammar older than coarse mahogany 
and a fetish that cast spells as earnestly as does a cliff’s edge   

but this lengua I embody naively believes  
that forgiveness is imminent 
in every breath that whispers, “La bendición…”  

A dissident etymology ​

there are dialects  
that conjure wounds deeper than the Sargasso Sea 
and its cryptic waters 

for words are an index 
in which every last breath can echo a biblical curse
or hail a tree’s limb 

yet horizons come alive anew 
in dissident etymologies      
that speak their endearments in black 

black is that enigma, after all, by which our beloved are beckoned, 
and a quiet audacity held dear  

for words are an index, too 
in which every last breath can whisper a secret   
or hail 
a boricua’s kiss 
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Eric Morales-Franceschini was born in Humacao, Puerto Rico and raised in southern Florida. Eric is a former day laborer and US Army veteran who now holds a PhD in Rhetoric from UC, Berkeley and is Assistant Professor of English and Latin American Studies at the University of Georgia.  He writes and teaches in the fields of decolonial studies, Caribbean literature, Cuban cinema, and liberation thought in the Américas and is at work on a scholarly manuscript, Epic Quintessence: the mambí and the mythopoetics of Cuba Libre, and a prose and poetry manuscript titled Post Festum. "Isla," "Benediction," and "A dissident etymology" are his first published poems.

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Did you father ever swear?

3/19/2018

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Rinconcito
is a special “little corner” in Somos en escrito for short writings: a single poem, a short story, a memoir, flash fiction, and the like.

Did your father ever swear?
​

​By Jenny Irizary

Come to think of it my father only ever swore
in Spanish Maldito sinvergüenza some verb porquerías
I could never catch what was being done to the porquerías
or if it was their being-made getting done to him
when I didn’t do the dishes
fast or often enough
(it was me he usually muttered that phrase to)
stoic not angry
but yes, sometimes he was angry.
You asked me did he ever take me
fishing? Yeah, and I was disobedient
or something I don’t remember
and he slapped
me. No, he didn’t do it a lot
just when I was being contrary.
My mother?
Never
calm
even that time I came home
and she’d stayed
to do laundry
caught her hand in the press lever
(we didn’t have tumble machines)
it looked like a crushed pomegranate
and sidewalk gum boiled into beet juice
but she didn’t cry
and my dad explained
what had happened
he wasn’t at work, either, which was odd
only happened one other time
I can think of
because he drank too much
and when the guy he carpooled with
to the factory came by
my mom peaked out the door
whispered he had a hangover
(she knew vernacular like that
words her relatives slipped on
into other verbs
I could never tell which ones
so she talked to officials
or just anyone speaking English
or I did).
So that was the other time my dad
didn’t go to work.
I was usually the first
home to take care of my younger brother
no, not the one that died in my mother’s arms at the bus stop
the one that got tied up
in the umbilical cord
wrapped up inside
came out blue not breathing
he’s why I always thought the Blues
was a good word for music you choke
out when people didn’t want you
to breathe
my brother didn’t speak
in the same sounds
assigned actions as other people
but his exclamations
aren’t exactly passive
and he never was, either,
which was why I watched him
like when he climbed out the window onto the roof
maybe searching for kites
or just a different view
when my dad showed up at the front door
I was staring down at
my shoes willing his eyes
anywhere but up
when he looked
and saw my brother climbing
smiling the rest of us were panicked
(but my brother seemed very relaxed)
took a hand off the roof
reached up
and our dad started
to coax him down
telling him not to be afraid
even though he clearly wasn’t
“Come back inside
where it’s safe”
that kind of thing
he rarely spoke
so soothingly to me
although when I threw a baseball
through the garage window
and pieced the glass back together
with glue he grinned
a little
at the notion I could
put one over on him.
I wasn’t a good liar and I felt guilty
so I usually just confessed
like when my brother and I were jumping
on the bed he seemed to stay in the air
longer than I could have
sworn he was up
when I came down
feet hard on his belly
sloshing like the sound those fish
would have made if I had caught them
instead of being a good-for-nothing
like my father said
(or whatever he said in Spanish
like I said I don’t know Spanish
didn’t teach you Spanish
but life sticks dictionaries you can’t
shake to your shoe
and you walk around like that
sometimes for a lifetime
maybe just for a childhood
anyway
my brother and I we were young and
the diagnosis
was around that time
I cried when I told my dad
I thought I knocked
the quiet voice out of him
made him loud with the sounds
people use to excuse the fear
they already have
maybe call the police
(and later, they did
and that’s why my parents decided
if I was going to college they couldn’t
take care of him
so I’m kind of the reason he was institutionalized
in a way because otherwise he might have
gotten arrested or hurt
but that place we dropped him
rotting mattresses lined up smelling of semen and urine
out of the movies or books
or the records those kind of places didn’t keep
or worse, the ones they did).
And the diagnosis when they called my little brother
“Retarded” then “Developmentally Delayed” then “Autistic”
and always “unacceptable”
this kid who loved to fly kites with me at Wrigley Field
until he took a roll of receipt tape from a vendor
and the guy yelled for some police
and they tackled him
my English almost wasn’t good enough
to get him off
not using language like other people
is one of those inexcusable cardinal sins I guess
or maybe stealing
while Puerto Rican
and what you kids call it
non-neurotypical
and running smiling
bent over looking up
a kite soaring overhead
we’re supposed to be docile
shouldn’t be able to hunch over
and move that’s some trickster terror
to some people
that day when my brother and I almost both got booked
for stealing juvenile delinquents
was the one time I saw my father cry
and he didn’t swear in English or Spanish
nothing he could get done with words.
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​Jenny Irizary grew up along the Russian River in Northern California and now resides in Oakland. She holds a B.A. in Ethnic Studies and an M.A. in literature from Mills College. Her work has been published in Label Me Latina/o, Atticus Review, Sick Lit, Snapping Twig, District Lit, Communion, and other journals. Her poem, "If You Want More Proof She's Not Puerto Rican," was the winner of Green Briar Review's 2016 poetry contest.

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