Monday, September 28, 2015

I-Dentity

I-DENTITY


 I’m from old ladies
  with wrinkled skin, flowing skirts, and colorful headties
   who smoked pipes and snuffed tobacco
    and drank café black, fuerte y muy caliente
     sipping from home-made demi-tasses

I’m from savory smells of 'sweet-han' cooking and fresh salty seas
 and sounds of braying burros and childhood laughter
  frolicking at ring games
   chasing catfish down gurgling streams
    diving and splashing in cool mossy depths

I’m from grannys and nen-nens, macooms, and tanties
 named Alice and Benita and Laurencia
  and mothers who sang aguinaldos and danced
   and chatted in Español and French Patois
    and served beloved borracho sons
     steaming sancoche while young girls waited

I’m from women who knew the value of book learning they never had
 and whose steely hope shone through mantilla-draped faces
  and black-cloaked bods, and downcast eyes
   and vice-like arms holding young ones close
    following en-hearsed remains
     of husband-provider gone too soon

I’m from matriarchs who gave all they have and then some more
 and told talks of age-old, and folk-loric feats
  around blazing fire
   triumphant sagas deeply etched
    upon retinas of fading memory

 Women like Paulina and Alice and Marcelina
  with identity firm set
   and buoyed by laughter
    and passed on to each sapling, bud,
     and germinating seed

   who made sure we knew
    that
   “Gopaul luck
    ain’t Seepaul luck”
    that
   “what sweet in goat mouth
    go sour in he behind”
    that
   “one day for police
    and one day for thief”
   and
    that
     some sweet day
    before cock get teeth
   our sun,too,
  will also rise.





© KPLewis (KalyPsouL)
09.28.2015

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