The Poet X(8)
*
“I don’t want to take
the bread and wine, and Father Sean says it should always and only be done with joy.”
*
Mami gives me a hard look.
I stare straight ahead.
It’s difficult to say who’s won this round.
Holy Water
“I just don’t know about that girl,”
Mami loud-whispers to Papi.
They never think that Twin and I can hear.
But since they barely say two words to each other unless it’s about us or dinner, we’re always listening when they speak and these flimsy Harlem walls
barely muffle any sound.
“Recently, she’s got all kinds of devils inside of her.
They probably come from you.
I’ve talked to Padre Sean and he said he’ll talk to her at confirmation class.”
And I want to tell Mami:
Father Sean talking to me won’t help.
That incense makes bow tie pasta of my belly.
That all the lit candles beckon like fingers that want to clutch around my throat.
That I don’t understand her God anymore.
I hear Papi shushing her quiet.
“It’s that age. Teenage girls are overexcited.
Puberty changes their mind. Son locas.”
And since Papi knows more
about girls than she does
she stays silent at his reply.
I don’t know if it’s prayer to hope that soon my feelings will drown me faster than the church’s baptismal water.
People Say
Papi was a mujeriego.
That he would get drunk at the barbershop and touch the thigh of any woman who walked too close.
They say his tongue was slick with compliments and his body was like a tambor with the skin stretched too tight.
They say Papi was broken,
that he couldn’t get women pregnant, so he tossed his seeds to the wind, not caring where they landed.
They say Twin and I saved him.
That if it wasn’t for us
Mami would have kicked him to tomorrow or a jealous husband would have shanked him dead.
They say Papi used to love to dance but now he finally has a spine that allows him to stand straight.
They say we made it so.
On Papi
You can have a father who lives with you.
Who every day eats at the table and watches TV in the living room and snores through the whole night and grunts about the bills, or the weather, or your brother’s straight As.
You can have a father who works for Transit Authority, and reads El Listín Diario, and calls back to the island every couple of months to speak to Primo So-and-So.
You can have a father who, if people asked, you had to say lived with you.
You have to say is around.
But even as he brushes by you on the way to the bathroom
he could be gone as anybody.
Just because your father’s present doesn’t mean he isn’t absent.
All Over a Damn Wafer
As repentance for not participating in communion last time, Mami makes me go
to evening Mass with her every evening this week, even the days that aren’t confirmation class.
When Communion time comes
I stand in line with everyone else and when Father Sean places the Eucharist onto my tongue I walk away,
kneel in my pew,
and spit the wafer into my palm when I’m pretending to pray.
I can feel the hot eyes of the Jesus statue watching me hide the wafer beneath the bench, where his holy body will now feed the mice.
Monday, September 17
The Flyer
“Calling all poets!”
The poster is printed
on regular white computer paper.
The bare basics:
Spoken Word Poetry Club
Calling all poets, rappers, and writers.
Tuesdays. After school.
See Ms. Galiano in room 302 for details.
It’s layered behind other more colorful and bigger-lettered announcements but it still makes me stop
halfway down the staircase, as kids late to class try their best to accidentally make me topple down the stairs.
But I’m rooted to the spot, a new awareness buzzing over the noise.
This poster feels personal, like an engraved invitation mailed directly to me.
After the Buzz Dies Down
I crumple the flyer in my backpack.
Balled and zipped up tight.
Tuesdays I have confirmation class.
Not a chance Mami’s gonna let me out of that.
Not a chance I want anyone hearing my work.
Something in my chest flutters like a bird whose wings are being gripped still by the firmest fingers.
Tuesday, September 18
Aman
After two weeks of bio review,
safety lessons, and blahzayblahblah—
we’re finally starting real work.
A boy, Aman, is assigned as my lab partner.
I saw him around last year,
but this is our first class together.