Miami Moves Me

At parties I sat tabled and watched

the other fathers waltz their daughters

across the floor. Their girls demure

as the dapper daddies smiled

down on them. I waited for Papi

to extend his hand and lead us out

toward the center of the room,

but even though he tapped his toes

to every tune, he never looked my way.

 

At home I begged the mirror to explain.

I blamed my freckles, my braces,

the image of my mother 

stamped on my face, reminder

of the wife who left. So much 

time I spent hating myself, 

I never thought to ask him.

 

 

A life lived through music takes its place in the night sky.

Your song sings through stars now, June moon in the night sky.

 

Through poems you wrote the music and through books you wrote a life.

I call out to you with elements and your music fills the sky.

 

You, my Libra sign of air, your red hair a crown of light.

The water breezes through the trees and settles in the sky.

 

You send me a sunflower and I send you roses in reply.

There were poems we didn't finish here—let's keep writing in the sky.

 

I say, I love the rain, and you say, I love Merwin's "Rain Light." 

We don't have to see to know—it’s written in the sky.

 

All night the hurricane rain is your response to my last line.

Maureen, I kept my promise here—let's keep writing in the sky.

 

—in the car on the way to his wife’s doctor

appointments, on walks to the Little River 

through Sherwood Forest—in case I get bored, 

he says, as if he were seven instead of 70, 

 

retired from 40 years of civil engineering 

for the city. Painted with Kreyòl in rust-red 

 

and keloided with tape, the instrument 

travels caseless, neck gripped in his left

 

fret-working hand, belly of it on his knees 

like a grandchild. He plays while he paces 

 

in front of his house and the ylang-ylang tree 

he uses for home remedies, swearing they keep 

 

him free from disease. Do you sing? he asks 

when I pass by with my dogs on their evening walk. 

 

Yes, I say, but I’m out of voice. a phrase 

he doesn’t believe in, that makes him laugh. 

 

Is this the last night I’ll delight in her delight over her latest puzzle, the room giddy with the glee of her imagination at play? Alive with the wonderment of the child she once was, she shows off how she’s framed the border, has matched all the patterns and colors, is almost done. But she worries there must be pieces missing, and I worry too, suddenly realizing that her same fate awaits me, awaits us all, the obvious metaphor plainly laid out on the dining table: enduring my own life as a puzzle I can never give up on, delighted yet worn by the task, terrified, as she must be, that I too may never quite finish piecing it together, but grateful for today, as she must also be, even if it might be our last. 

 

The mall populates with early shoppers.

I pose the theory: our parents are chosen by us--

the best teachers for this life’s lesson. Mum says:

“I would never have chosen my parents...

 

I know you had it hard, yours in two countries,

but you never saw violence like I did.”

 

Now her voice is a clap of blackbirds ascending 

the pencil-smudged sky beyond the glass ceiling. 

 

Driving home, my child-mother 

is the pause of each intersection. 

 

Take her out the house; bathe her in moonlight; 

trauma captured in the amber of traffic lights. 

Wash blood from her face, the carpet. 

 

Here is the language of light: each memory, a photon. 

Here is the sun: a gargantuan yolk punctured at moonrise. 

 

What did they know 

of light, two kids

 

from the city?

What did they seek

 

but couldn’t name

in their lifetime?

 

I record what we’ve 

been given, light 

 

in abundance, 

on the beach, far

 

from where we 

were originated,

 

far from where we

expected to

 

and never meant

to stay.

 

Tired most weekends after hustling and moving furniture, 

Tío often fell asleep mid-sentence on the La-Z-Boy or sprawled 

 

on the battered family room couch watching old westerns, 

a cigarette dangling from his hand Mirta would pluck 

 

and put out. Tío Ricelo, her still life, a cherub in repose 

much like the infamous cerdo that 1987 Noche Buena. 

 

After Alex called 911, los bomberos extinguished the blaze,

exorcised the ghost of a slaughtered cochino that dared 

 

give us the finger from the great beyond. El puerco, above all, 

las costillas, oh so succulent. The secret behind such flavor: 

 

Mirta y Ricelo scraping off el cochino’s charred outer layer 

like archeologists knee-deep in excavation.

 

She doesn’t know that the mechanical whirring she hears
is the plane’s landing gear extending or that her eardrums
will start to pressurize and pop as she descends to her new homeland.

 

She only knows that it has been less than two weeks
since her 25th birthday. That she will not be there to help her family
put up Christmas lights or hold sparklers with them on New Year’s.

 

She doesn’t know that today is Rosh Hashana. That children
throughout the city are smiling, dipping apple slices 

in honey while their rabbis blow shofars. 

 

She doesn’t know that her soon-to-be neighbor in Hialeah is looking 
for their lost grey cat. That the Burdines in Westland Mall—just a few
steps from her soon-to-be apartment—is having a clearance sale.

 

She doesn’t know that a woman has just checked out
the 3,000,000th book from the county library,
setting off sirens and confetti cannons, scaring her half to death.

 

When my mother steps off the airplane
she doesn’t know how dangerous and frightening this city is,
nor does she know how kind and beautiful it can be.

 

But as she notices the schism in the sky, between the clear 
lustrous blue and cloudy sallow grey, she soon finds out.

 

 

They say to be loved is to be changed,

but can I truly love a city 

that has changed this much?

Removed some old bones & joints 

& replaced them with shiny new ones

that’ll inevitably be replaced as well.

A never finished Ship of Theseus.

Even the village that helped raise me 

is nothing more than a ghost town.

I can still hear my neighbors’ 

celebrating my first time going to school 

in the wind, the whistling & rattling 

replicating those paper party horns. 

I feel sorry for the children of today

as they don’t know what it’s like

to truly be a kid.

Simple & innocent.

Clean & fun.

Being able to walk to Omni-International Hotel,

buy a Cheryl Lynn 6-inch on 7th Ave,

& go to house parties every weekend.

No danger, no threats, no fear.

So many good things

that are no longer the case. 

 

Once a thirty-three-year-old coworker at DSW followed you home. He made small talk on the train, told you he wished he had a girlfriend like you. You moved seats. He got off at your stop in the Grove even though he said he lives in Opa-locka. 

You descended the stairs from the platform, crossed US1 with other pedestrians, aware that he was somewhere behind you. You walked down 27th avenue.

 

You did not cross the street even though home was so close but instead strolled purposefully into noisy Flannigan’s and waited for your big sister to come. 

 

The next day you reported him to HR. When they didn’t do anything, even though other employees had said he makes them feel uncomfortable, you wrote a letter to company headquarters. 

 

Yes, to cross the street, you must know how to write a letter whether they read it or not.