For the Sonorous

Yesterday, my friend tried to describe

The difference between my father and grandparents,

And she came up with the word, “civilized”.

My father was simply more “civilized”.

And I said to myself, how could that be?

When my father and his parents sit down to dinner

In abuelita’s pumpkin-colored kitchen

I can guarantee you

They all say grace, gracias a Dios

Por la comida y la familia.

Thank you and por favor are nothing less than necessities.

So, what’s different?

Is it the chickens?

They’ve been roaming free since the twentieth century,

Weaving through holes in my grandparents’ fence

And settling in the front yard to bask in the sun.

I promise you they feed their chickens,

They are not barbarians.

Is it that my father snuck out between the tumbleweeds,

Out of McAllen and into the Sunshine State?

Somehow San Francisco suburbs are more refined

Than Texas neighborhoods with twine clotheslines

Where the oversized Sun bleaches the fabric.

Is it because my father taught his children English,

Slowly losing the lilting a’s and rolling r’s

Of South Texas Español?

Do you mean to tell me there ain’t nothing wrong with English,

And that somehow it is inherently better

Than la idioma de Cervantes, Borges, y Márquez?

That somehow, a language that sounds like tinfoil in my teeth

Is more civilized than

Una idioma que a mí me parece como la lluvia en mi lengua?

Try and tell me that my grandparents—my ancestors—are uncivilized

And I will not be the only force opposing you.

The floating gardens of Xochimilco

And the Impossible City of Tenochtitlan disagree with you.

Thousands of years’ worth of language and literatura

Disagree with you.

The word you are looking for, it is not “civilized”.

De veras, quieres decir “Americanized”.

 

Light Poem

 

To Gabriel García Márquez

Gabriel García Márquez is the author of 100 Years of Solitude, Autumn of the Patriarch, and countless other novels. “Light is Like Water” is one of his many short stories.  

 

Estimado Señor García Márquez,

I am writing to you because

Of a story I read,

Hace, seís meses.

It was called “Light is Like Water”—

La luz es como el agua.

And I would like to know

Where the light comes from.

You said it comes out of light bulb faucets but

What kind of glass stores that kind of beauty?

If light is like water, it carries a million

Molecules and lost memories,

Corrodes copper pipes and breaks glass

In a rush of luz.

Does the water in my faucet reside inside

Its swan-curved neck, or does it only appear

Because I ask it to?

Your light spills over when two boys break a light bulb,

And yet I pass light bulbs every day

Without flooding my own home.

Thank god for that, otherwise my mother

Might be quite peeved.

When I looked into the sun at age four

My eyes danced through black and gold spots.

They burned, Sr. Márquez,

Pero podía sentir

Your light behind them.

If I touched the Sun, your luz grande,

I might burn my hand,

Leaving a Jupiter-red spot on my index finger,

But I don’t know that I would ever regret

Having poked the underside of the Sun’s belly.

“Look,” I would say, “I have touched the Sun.”

And I suppose you would ask me when I planned

On going back up there.  

Does your light really burn, or did the boys just

Gorge themselves on liquid light until

Their mortal bodies sublimed?

Quizás nunca sabré, pero

I figured I would ask.

Sincerely,

A Reader