I. Child
searing
trail against skin,
small and
small and
under piles ofblankets
please
do not see me
do not see –!
II. Morning
abuelita’s cafetera steaming
creeps inside my nose
and walter calls
mucho, mucho amor-
I smell a
cigarette outside my window
outside me, so close-
she calls up the stairs:
time to start again
again.
III. On the Bus
thereisnogreengrassonthewaytoschooljustgray
andonthegraytheresmoldyblackuntilwegettomy favorite:
bright yellow and teal
and magenta
and here
is
the
sky!
Are those clouds? Is that the sun?
the driver smells like listerine and
fried onions and
not cigarettes!
we wait too long
to say goodbye
when i get off the bus.
Note: These three poems are part of a larger collection that centers directly on a sense of place: Hialeah, Florida. The poet’s childhood, in this immigrant community just outside Miami, provided the images, scents, sounds, and texture in these poems. Hialeah’s unofficial slogan is ‘agua, fango y factoria,’ (water, mud and factories), thus the collection’s title. Rockvale Review is pleased to publish this excerpt.
Jeni De La O’s Biographical Statement: In 1932 winds carried a woman from Santiago to Jamaica and from Jamaica to Queens. She married and had a daughter, who had a daughter. In 1992 those same winds pushed that daughter’s daughter from Miami to Michigan, where she writes poetry and short stories about warm waters and personal catastrophe.