And after you got into a blue pickup truck.
Word was you’d been the last to see the saucepan in the sky.
Word was you beat the shit out of soldiers again,
Those hijueputas, who lit a firecracker in your foot,
At gunpoint of course —
VII.
Uncle, I swing on the hammock you slept in;
I’ve never heard so many roosters. After you left
We weren’t allowed to speak of María. On the 30th year
From the day she died, in another country —
There was salt on my father’s cheeks and he said
Sand is his skin. ¿You know that right mijo? Uncle,
Our little “astro-nut” jumping off the pier
With your head in a fish-tank. What we do is stare
At the beach for you. We wait for spume
To touch our cheeks. This is what we do
Sometimes when we can’t sleep. No.
This is what we don’t do some times. In the water
We say the lines you wrote thirty years ago.
In case we find you.
País mío no existes
sólo eres una mala silueta mía
una palabra que le creí al enemigo.
Roque Dalton
Crybaby
All I was was a chillón.
Neighbors lined up against our fence
while the nurse checked for fever.
Mom called me her ear’s fruit fly.
Even backyard mangoes said
¡Callá este chillón diosmío!
Abuelita says everyone brushed ash-toothpaste
with horsehair toothbrushes, that Mom
had a baker’s sleep schedule,
that before 4 a.m., bakers once baked “bagels”
for tourists. My town hates bagels. I’m nine
and I’ve never seen a bagel.
I don’t remember how tourists tipped.
Before I was born, the dawn locomotion of troops
was the town’s alarm. Abuelita says
the aftertaste of ashes is moth wings,
arid powder where names are buried.
Those gringos wore uniforms
and threw coins into the tide
so boys reached for copper
from El Norte, where dusk is honey.
Abuelita says mangoes begged god,
¡Callá estos gringos diosmío!
I know no one slept before my birth.
For years after,
still, no one slept.
Abuelita Neli’s Garden with Parakeets Named Chepito
Abuelita’s mother died when she was one.
No one talks about Great-Great-Grandma
or how Abuelita draws her eyebrows on at dawn.
I saw them once
when I pretended to snore.
Abuelita’s name should be Rocio
because she wakes at 5 to water plants,
her name means truth
in some language no one speaks.
Grandpa says Abuelita burned the beans
otra vez. Chepito the Fourth dreams of tortillas
when Grandpa swings in the hammock. Abuelita,
¿pero why you don’t have eyebrows?
Sometimes Abuelita dries her bras on rosebushes.
Doña Avalos thinks she grows the best roses,
so when they walk to the market
their baskets bounce on opposite sides.
I forgot to feed Chepito the Third for a week.
I said the cat ate Chepito the Second
and when he became dough below my feet
I buried the first Chepito.
Grandpa cuts our parakeet’s wings and dips our moons
in vodka. Truth is, before I drowned
Chepito the Fourth, I asked him if he remembered
the eggshell he broke. Abuelita, ¿will you forget
the veins on the back of Grandpa’s hands?
I Don’t Want to Speak of “Don Chepe”
He has chased all of us up the street to the market waving his machete. Of my two sisters, the eldest never returned, he caught her with a man not her husband and cut a dahlia on her dress. The youngest hid in the banana groves, she told him she was pregnant. We inherited our jawline from his father — murdered by another woman’s husband at the cantina. Typical. When he’s calm, he rakes mounds of leaves and trash, rolls and lights newspaper, watches flames almost choke the lowest almond branches. I know he thinks of his wife, his two sons, the ones before us, and why they left him. He speaks of them only when he, drunk, tells me to play Javier Solís records. If I split a leaf with my nail, I smell embers erase yesterday’s headlines: The Oro Bridge bombed by guerrillas. Between the lit mounds, I see my sisters waiting to throw water, to hear ashes: curl, sizzle, smoke.
— Tía Mali, age 16
How I Learned to Walk
Calláte. Don’t say it out loud: the color of his hair,
the sour odor of his skin, the way they say
his stomach rose when he slept. I have
done nothing, said nothing. I piss in the corner
of the room, the outhouse is far, I think
orange blossoms call me to eat them. I fling rocks
at bats hanging midway up almond trees.
I’ve skinned lizards. I’ve been bored. It’s like
that time I told my friend Luz to rub her lice
against my hair. I wanted to wear a plastic bag,
to smell of gasoline, to shave my hair, to feel
something like his hands on my head.
When I clutch pillows, I think of him. If he sleeps
facedown like I do. If he can tie strings
to the backs of dragonflies. I’ve heard
of how I used to run to him. His hair still
smelling of fish, gasoline, and seaweed. It’s how
I learned to walk, they say. Calláte. If I step
out this door, I want to know nothing will take me.
Not the van he ran to. Not the man he paid to take him.
Mom was asleep when he left. People say
somehow I walked across our cornfield
at dawn, a few steps behind. I must have seen him
get in that van. I was two. I sat behind a ceiba tree,
waiting. No one could find me.
Postpartum
My son’s in the other room. This little
burlap sack of rice came out yellow,
some deficiency, got incubated, hasn’t
stopped crying — his father wasn’t there,
he was “out fishing.” His father’s mother came
next day saying, I’m saint I’m saint,
I won’t let you trick him. “The big saint”
wanted to check my son for birthmarks
to see if he’s really Zamora. She found them
near his balls. Esa puta didn’t even give
enough for powdered milk. And don’t
tell me he looks like his father, maybe
the back of his hair. I know his father
doesn’t love me. You don’t have to tell me:
you’re stupid, you’re jealous, crazy.
Maybe he hears, I wish he hears my moans
when he’s on top of his whores.
Like I don’t know. I am crazy, but not
estúpida. If I catch him, me las va pagar.
Me las va pagar, that dipshit
deep in debt over a fishing boat
he can’t catch nothing in. My son
won’t drink from me. I pump breasts,
rub sugar and honey on them,
¿why won’t he drink from me?
— Mom, age 18
“Ponele Queso Bicho” Means Put Cheese on It Kid
for Miguel Alcántara, aka La Belleza
¿Why you post on my fence and wait for water, Belleza?
¿You don’t know? I’m Rambo.
Look at these muscles, they sh
ine like desks.
Va. Call me Sevestre Escalon.
It’s pronounced Sil-vés-tre, Belleza. Sil-vés-tre Es-ta-lón.
Comé mierda bicho. I made the best desks.
I had a shop. Ponele queso,
every night I cut where branch meets trunk.
¿When you gone make me a desk then?
I made desks. Ponele queso.
¿You know what that means?
When I die my phrase is gone be on TV,
it’ll be like Sevestre in that movie Cobra.
He’ll try to figure what that shit means.
Puta bicho, I’ll be famous.
It’s Sil-vés-tre, Belleza. And yes, I know what it means.
¿What it mean then?
Sounds like those mazes with the cheese in the middle and a rat outside.
Va. Va. Va. You do use that coconut.
I knew you were your father.
¿You knew my father?
Don’t touch the tiger’s balls.
I made the smoothest desks. Ponele queso.
It’s all in the smell bicho.
¿Did my father say that?
You’re touching the balls. You’re touching the balls.
But look, it’s something like when you go to the store
and vodka is two colones ¿right?
Right.
The label says 80 proof. But rubbing alcohol is one colón,
200 proof. So I wait for you to bring water.
¿What does that mean?
Look, I was passed out when he got in that van.
He had a backpack. You were asleep. He didn’t want to go.
But the dólares and war bicho. Ponele queso.
Ponele queso and the rat won’t leave.
Then, It Was So
To tell you I was leaving
I waited and waited
rethinking first sentences in my sleep,
I didn’t sleep,
and my heart was a watermelon
split each night. Outside,
3 a.m. was the same as bats
and you were our kerosene lamp.
Amor, I thought it was something
we were in that day, hiding
from bullets in sugarcane, my chest
pressed against the gossamers
stuck to your thighs,
when stars swam inside you.
The last second has passed
and I can’t forget one centimeter.
To kiss each cheek,
your lips, your forehead.
I miss our son. I miss the faint wick
on his skin. How I held him
and how I wanted to then, though
I didn’t wake him.
That dawn, I needed to say
you remind me of my father
and leaving is a bucket of mosquitoes
no one empties. Cariño,
it was so quiet when I started
counting the days
I wasn’t woken by him.
— Dad, age 19
Mom Responds to Her Shaming
Dad chased me out of the house again with his machete
¿what would you have done? You’re up north,
I waited twenty-three months to date ¿and you say
you won’t speak to me? You must know
I’m not allowed to see our son. That I sleep
in the street because “my boyfriends”
won’t open their doors. No one will open.
Hijueputa, I was seventeen, the valedictorian,
you wouldn’t use a condom. Give me back
the minutes you’d undress me under
the grapefruit tree. Your new girlfriend,
your sisters say she’s a faithful one. Hipócrita,
I’m the one that caught you with La Salivosa,
no one believes me. I wish you knew
what it’s like to hide from my dad
and wait for him to pass out so I can hold
my son’s cheeks as I try to explain —
I can’t stay here.
Alterations
She says she lit a candle and placed it under my balls when I was born
because they were too big,
of course you don’t want that. Then
there’s wetting your fingers with spit
to pull the nose in the morning so it’s straight.
And it was straight
till I broke it turning the corner
playing tag in first grade.
You shat on your face, Mom said,
and hit me nowhere near my face.
She hit me when I broke my hand,
the branch of the sweetsop tree
too thin for me to hang from.
Two days it took
to take me to the hospital.
First she pulled me by the other arm,
hit my ass with a stick. Time-out,
she locked me in a room.
When she saw my arm swell,
she took me to the witch doctor
who spat tobacco
and rubbed me with ruda leaves
then blew smoke.
Heal heal little frog’s butt,
he said, I thought it worked.
We were poor. We sold pupusas
to patients. In the next room
a kid was tied to his bed.
It’s a thing that happens the real doctor said.
The Jell-O was my favorite part
of wearing a cast. But I liked it all,
the not showering, the plastic bag over it
when I had to shower
in front of the well in my underwear.
The birds. Mom with a towel.
Earthworms in the dirt. Wind.
Her fingers drying my hair. The flies
hovering over my arm.
The smell.
We never went back to the doctor
to cut the cast. Mom used a saw
once my arm didn’t hurt
when I stuck a stick down it
when it itched.
She kept rubbing my arm
with red-fox oil first thing
in the morning,
passed a candle along my skin
dropped three drops of wax
then rubbed them toward my fingers
lightly, lightly,
the bones didn’t crack.
Aubade
I’ll be back soon mijo —
but in our windows still no glass,
when raindrops hit the sill
they touch my skin like her eyes did
that morning she said
I’ll be back soon mijo.
After the rains, too many mosquitoes
so the clinic sent uniformed men
who sprayed a thick fog
meant to kill larvae.
We covered bowls, pans, pots, and bottles,
washed them by hand,
but Abuelita still
“accidentally” broke my milk bottle
so I would stop asking for Mom.
No glass in our windows.
I know she won’t return,
I’ve memorized the names of roads
I can’t pronounce
far from these volcanoes that know
what toys I don’t let friends touch
and in which drawer I keep the letters
Mom has sent me.
I touch the larvae growing in old tires
in our backyard, I know
she won’t return.
Abuelita hid my letters
with addresses I can’t pronounce
so I would stop asking her
to read them to me
every night,
under this terracota roof,
under this candlelight.
Prayer
If nuns at school find out, guards
won’t let me through. They did that
for Margarita. I can’t tell anyone
I’m going to see my parents.
(¡I’m going to see my parents!)
If Mom was here, we’d split palm sticks
and I’d run to Doña Chita’s,
buy shoemaker’s glue, China paper,
nylon. Church bells just rang.
Diosito, guard my way across
the bean field, past Great-Great-Grandma’s,
over the fútbol field, down the road
past Mom’s best friend’s. I gotta ask
Mother Superior how long
it takes to cross Guatemala, México.
Diosito, I’ve been eating broccoli,
drinking all my milk so parents
think I’m big. Mom and I would fly
long as it took the kite to crash. Often
it was the neighbor’s avocado trees,
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