Puertorriqueño (Ray DeJesús)

The following post is dedicated to my grandmother Raquel "Quequi" Maldanado Rodriguez (1926-1994). Me haces falta, mami. Te amo.

i) For the past several weeks I have given much thought to the idea of identity crisis in poetics. I've been much beleaguered with conflict:  Do I keep my mouth shut? Don't agitate, to I need this discussion in order to sleep soundly, even if this discussion is whispered, a monologue.

ii.) My conscience directs me towards that second choice. Dad: "Don't get on some soapbox!" Me: "I won't!" Mom: "You need to do it! Why not?"

1) There is a silence to my last name, a quietude I've never been able to completely discern. What does it mean? Do I change it? You know, cute high school kids can be quite cruel. Like so many other high school students,I heard the jokes, and I took them, stored them away, festered they did, I'd let them go, eventually. The power of affirmation, reaffirmation, embrace, detachment.

2) What in the hell is poetry? I'm fifteen-years-old, and I'm looking at trochees, stanzas, enjambments, and what I once completely disregarded, dismissed, I decide to touch, devour. In a previous post, I mentioned that cummings' 100 poems was the first volume of poetry I truly read, parsed. I carried it with me at all times: On my way to a friend's, on the N train headed towards Brighton. Why was this text becoming inextricable from my person? A limb. Forgive the mawkishness, it's nostalgia.

3) I remember handing George (Mr. MacLarty at the time) my first attempt. He was so very kind; he was diplomatic, generous. A little too lyrical, but keep trying he said. I was easily discouraged. I decided to sleep for the next two years, but I kept on reading during those moments of wakefulness. I'd scribble something for my la-dy friend, proudly signing it before handing it to her. Silly. Too lyrical, but maybe I'd get it straight. I never did get it straight, and don't plan on getting it straight, but I stay its path. I'm still sleeping, but college in September, time to wake up, just a little.

4) First semester concludes, I decide on my major: Comparative Literature. Fancy, no? Dad: "What the hell are you going to do with that? Maybe advertising." At the time, I wasn't sure, and I'm still not sure, but I was certain that I loved books, text; I liked slamming my body against the shelves of the college library (true story). Chuito Sin Coquis: My first college attempt at writing a one-act play. Good? No. Necessary? Yes. Poorly acted by yours truly on a stage in St. John's University? Of course. Necessary? Yes. Born: 1993. From: Disparaging remarks made by some latina friends at the time. Some of those gems: "Why you dress like that?"; "You smoke Chesterfields?"; "You're like a blancito." Now, mind you, I love, and still love, these friends, but make no mistake, a challenge had been declared by said friends. Why should I write this one-act-er that was best suited for the litter box. Necessary? Yes. Why should I keep writing? Should I? what are 'mi gente' going to think of me. Should I write about the cultura, la famalia? Could I write about other things? Maybe. Not sure. Hand me that riddle.

5) Fast forward: Years later, I continue writing that thing called poetry or poesia; I'm stubborn. Problem: That damn last name. If I only I could change it. No, I'll keep it. Mami would slapped me in the head for even thinking such a thing. I keep it. Now what? What? Yes, Victor Hernández Cruz, William Carlos Williams, Piri Thomas, Miguel Piñero, Julia de Burgos, they'd all been there, done it. Caveat: Not in anyway am I putting my name in that list, just imparting examples.

6) La familia: DeJesús, Rodriguez. Locations: Caguas, Ponce, Brooklyn. Scattered about cool cats. Diaspora with a smile. Grandma (Mami) took care of me, taught me la lengua, made me eat the food, waved the flag, proud to be boricua. Me, proud? Not so much. It took years of thought and therapy before I'd embrace that last name. I suppose my problem with the last name is that it seemed to obstruct, impede my plans. What plans? How? Don't have an answer. Lucky to be bilingual, right Mami, Mom, Dad, Papi? You see, I'm not pontificating, but paying homage to my roots, my foundation, my cement. This for Pepe, John (mi primo, dead at 37 due to alcoholism), Ismael, Abuelo Fingue, Abuelo Luis, Titi Lola, Titi Carmen, Tio Paco ( the gang stories of Red Hook, priceless. Names: The Chaplin Mau-Maus, The Apaches, et al). All them cowboy and indians, my family. Wild cats, Fragmented, but united under one organic, poetic smile. Prosody, unbeknownst to them, was and is in their blood. Whether it manifests itself in form of "Coño" (fuck in our dialect), merengue, salsa, Hector Lavove, Tito, the music, the perpetual dance, tounge and foot. Ray, write about anything you want, it's all there for you to cradle. Use it all. Combine it all. Make it one. Sonrisa. Oh, the physiognomy of it all. The physiology. Orgullo. 

Recommendation of the day: Poets off Poetry (POP), which can be found
at Coldfront, is a monthly series where poets write about 
music. The series is curated by the inimitable Jackie Clark. 
Ms. Clark will be  launching a new series, Song of the Week, 
in the next few months. Happy to announce that I will be 
contributing to SOW.
 

Matt Hart for POP: http://coldfrontmag.com/category/poets-off-poet

 
The Lower East Side of Manhattan

By the East River
of Manhattan Island
Where once the Iroquois
canoed in style—
A clear liquid
caressing another name
for rock,
Now the jumping
Stretch of Avenue D
housing projects
Where Ricans and Afros
Johnny Pacheco / Wilson Pickett
The portable radio night—
Across the Domino sugar
Neon lights of the Brooklyn shore

Window carnival of
megalopolis lights
From Houston Street
Twenty kids take off
On summer bikes
Across the Williamsburg
Bridge
Their hair flying
With bodega bean protein
Below the working class
jumping like frogs—
Parrots with new raincoats
swinging canes of bamboo
Like third legs
Down diddy-bop 6th Street
of the roaring Dragons
Strollers of cool flow

When winter comes they fly
In capes down Delancey
Past the bites of pastrami
Sandwiches in Katz's
Marching through red bricks
aglow dragging hind leg
Swinging arms
Defying in simalcas

Hebrew prayers inside
metallic containers
Rolled into walls
Tenement relic
Roofs of pigeon airports

Horse-driven carts
arrive with the morning
Slicing through the venetian
blinds
Along with a Polish English
Barking peaches and melons
Later the ice man a-cometh
Selling his hard water
cut into blocks
The afternoon a metallic
slide intercourses buildings
which start to swallow
coals down their basement
Mouths.

Where did the mountains go
The immigrants ask
The place where houses
and objects went back
Into history which guided
Them into nature

Entering the roots of plants
The molasses of fruit
To become eternal again,
Now the plaster of Paris
Are the ears of the walls
The first utterances in Spanish
Recall what was left behind.

People kept arriving
as the cane fields dried
Flying bushes from another
planet
Which had a pineapple for
a moon
Vegetables and tree bark
popping out of luggage
The singers of lament
into the soul of Jacob Riis
Where the prayers Santa Maria
Through remaining fibers
of the Torah
Eldridge Street lelolai
A Spanish never before seen
Inside gypsies.
Once Cordova the cabala
Haberdasheries of Orchard Street
Hecklers riddling bargains
Like in gone bazaars of
Some Warsaw ghetto.

Upward into the economy
Migration continues—
Out of the workers' quarters
Pieces of accents
On the ascending escalator.

The red Avenue B bus
disappearing down the
Needle holes of the garment
factories—
The drain of a city
The final sewers
Where the waste became antique
The icy winds
Of the river's edge
Stinging lower Broadway
As hot dogs
Sauerkraut and all
Gush down the pipes
of Canal

After Forsyth Park
is the beginning of Italy
Florence inside Mott
Street windows—
Palermo eyes of Angie
Flipping the big
hole of a 45 record
The Duprees dusting
Like white sugar onto
Fluffed dough—
Crisscrossing
The fire escapes
To arrive at Lourdes'
railroad flat
With knishes
she threw next to
Red beans.

Broome Street Hasidics
with Martian fur hats
With those ultimatum brims
Puerto Ricans supporting
pra-pras
Atop faces with features
Thrown out of some bag
Of universal race stew—
Mississippi rural slang
With Avenue D park view
All in exile from broken
Souths
The horses the cows the
chickens
The daisies of the rural
road
All past tense in the urbanity
that remembers
The pace of mountains
The moods of the fields.

From the guayaba bushels
outside of a town
With an Arowak name
I hear the flute shells
With the I that saw
Andalusian boats
Wash up on the beach
To distribute Moorish
eyes.

The Lower East Side
was faster than the speed
Of light
A tornado of bricks
and fire escapes
In which you had to grab
on to something or take
Off with the wayward winds—

The proletariat stoop voices
Took off like Spauldine
rubber balls
Hit by blue broomsticks
on 12th Street—
Wintertime summertime
Seasons of hallways and roofs
Between pachanga and doo-wop
A generation left
The screaming streets of
passage
Gone from the temporary
station of desire and disaster

I knew Anthony's
and Carmen
Butchy
Little Man
Eddie
Andr
ew
Tiny
Pichon
Vigo
Wandy
Juanito
Where are they?
The windows sucked them up
The pavement had mouths that
ate them
Urban vanishment
Illusion
I too
Henry Roth
"Call It Sleep."
From Maraca: New and Selected Poems 1965-2000 by Victor  Hernández Cruz. Copyright © 2001 by Victor Hernández Cruz. Published by  Coffee House Press. Used by permission of the publisher.