By Kimberly K. Williams
Re-Learning the Alphabet: DNA y DACA I toss our DNA into the blue metal box like I am tossing in a bill. It doesn’t seem right, adding a plastic bag containing two vials of cheek cells to birthday cards and utility payments just to see where I’m ‘from.’ This is my DNA—my very core, I want to say, handle with care. But the United States Postal Service, like most things run by the U.S. government, is here to remind you that there’s nothing special about you. We are too many humans past caring. You don’t count. And someone with DNA like mine (so fair!) and a family story (like mine) three generations distant from Ellis Island will be glad to send you ‘home.’ Even if you were raised here. Even if you went to elementary school at the age of six and suddenly discovered English in your mouth. Even if you used these unexpected sounds to construct bridges between your parents and your grandparents and the country you were raised in. Even once you became used to these sounds and they became part of you, you ascertained along the way that your DNA holds no value, that all along you’d been using the wrong words, that they were as effective as $800 and hand-printed answers on a long form. You count as much as one more bill in the mailbox, even though you’ve already paid. To prove the fatness that three slim generations have gained, we’re going to reveal that we’ve had our fingers crossed behind our backs for decades. We’re going to stamp return to sender across your shoulders, face you south and, whether or not your DNA even formed there, and whether or not there’s a stupid wall blocking your exit, you’ll have to move along. We’re so pleased to send you ‘home’-- © Kimberly Williams
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Poems by Benjamín Valdivia. Translated by Kimberly Williams
A Tapestry In the west forms a web of unprecedented purple: threads of night and the day’s end are warmed in the warp of sun or sound: Crackle of the spectacle, scream of the dying star or today’s kiss. It is the radiant weave of violets in their rough grays and their definitive reds and amethysts. There you take the voice from which you weave a joyful season: an afternoon sifted in space as the threads of night burn into the plots of a tapestry. Jasmine’s Gift Astounding jasmine, its scent, its fresh gift; I don’t have a clear memory of having jasmines that day or if alone it was your appearance when the motion of your hair became a movement of aromas sailing by the constellations of the house. Everything blazed jasmine before your path: light white vegetable stars illuminating the keys of this same place. Figure in the Shade On my side, city of the heart drawing towards shore, throwing sands in the night: sea of those stripped of their load, water of the weightless gripping the pupils of the twilight. It’s a sea with defined lines: immovable waves striping the skin whose movements beat and regret the night. In these sands are two figures in a trance of unity: it is us traveling birds the contemplative air above the water: it’s us the figure in the sketched shadow wherein two wandering birds have flown to their perfect identity. A Drawing About Skin You draw on my skin a landscape: that black sun, the dark pine in the forest of the prodigious mountains. Underneath the drawing rounds the blood in its ardent circulation, its secret river. The colors warn and feed the eyes in the notebook of my skin. The blood sun reddens. The pine vibrates in the vital wind. And the mountains burn moss in whose dampness and mirages already spell this morning. Jaime H. Herrera is currently a Professor of English at Mesa Community College. Jaime is a product of the Juárez/El Paso border, a place he holds dear and which embodies who he is, as much Mexican as American, as much Mexicano (and mexinaco) as he is estadounidense (and gringo). He is bicultural and bilingual (and speaks a good Spanglish too). He knows that the border is a space that cannot be fenced. La frontera es un espacio que no se puede cercar. He loves translation, the back and forth between the two languages. Also. he writes his own poetry in both English and Spanish and has written a novel (as of yet unpublished), tentatively titled This is not Juárez. When he dies, he wants his ashes spread right in the middle of the bridge that connects Juárez and El Paso, his ashes blowing in both directions. This week's four poems were primarily translated by Jaime H. Herrera. *** Edifice of Sadness From your sadness is erected a wall and a chain. And neither do I leave the delight of the world nor board the ship of the day. Your sadness in my external world: the squaring of this slab of irreverent weight above everything that I think. There is a dead bird in all of this. But you say that the salt of your impatience is due to nothing. And I say that the sea has a few tears too many. Response of Things When you are not with me, I fall apart I wander as if without myself through these dark clouds over the irreparable cold that the night announces. Because flags sink and the minute is filled with rust and things don’t understand and are not encouraged to follow or they decide to be wilted and black. But on your return, in your steps, new like the world initial, time is clear and things lost in their abyss respond again, each one, to the names you give them. Preparation of the Trip I want to understand the joyful way through which the year comes. Also the circular flight of the sun opening its corolla. Burns in the cold the same substance of life trodden to the now and pursue the dreams of someone who trusts in the highest species of happiness. Black dots and unread stains are warned of in the map. Crosses, the trains thunderous passing and birds with black entrails. But at the end of the day the destiny and the journey are clear by which we will go. Terrestrial Time We are the arrows of the dates: dart of time. But we advance in the dry night or over the liquid day. No one repeats the day with us: new and fresh in the continuity. Because we roam in the wet slopes of our mutual loves. Because we are stronger than the fires with which terrestrial time has always wanted us and wants and will always want to burn. Father’s Day 2016
His handwriting had never been good. He always printed at a slant and had this way of mixing both capital and lower-case letters in the same words and sentences. Going through some of his belongings, I find the pad of legal paper on Father’s Day, my first without him, his first without us. He has noted four phone numbers, three with his local 734 area code. He had scrawled “HYATT--7th & HaGGarTy,” the hotel we always stayed in when we visited him. And then, below that, the sentence “Whales live in the blue ocean,” which is mystifying. Not that they live there, but that he’d write it, and all in lower case cursive letters, except for the capital W, these the only other words bobbing amongst the numerals in the yellow sea somewhere between the straight blue waves. The Truth About And the cat is busy and why not? Someone is out there accelerating down Olive Ave., driving the machines which provide the sound- track for my dreams. Why not expect to be fed at 4 a.m.? Then full, why not stretch into the green throw blanket and bathe? The dog will not stir, not even peek one fuzzy ear over the blanket once. He knows the truth about 4 a.m. and heaven knows someone in the house must seek it. Something New Might Be Revealed My ex-husband used to give me this look: you are over-thinking. He knew better than to say it aloud. But his silent frustration would indicate that over-thinking is a choice; that is, I overthink on purpose, which is something . to think about. And after a long day deliberating, an over-thinker sometimes simply needs to watch the Family Feud. Another over-thinker may say that this is rationalizing bad behavior. But it’s not. The over-thinker stays home and over-thinks, avoids crowds, which muddle thoughts, and analyzes even the weary traffic light for semantic meaning. The over-thinker occasionally thinks I need to get out more. But she usually elects to stay inside and think. For a break, she might read or re-alphabetize and organize her books. The enlightened over-thinker will recognize these penchants--will acknowledge them--but will continue to over-think in her own way: thinking as illusory means of control: if I think this out in advance, nothing can get me! It’s crap, of course, especially with our country’s penchant to terrorize itself any more. (But I digress.) If you are an over-thinker, you have plenty of company, although this might not occur to you because you are too busy ruminating to see you are surrounded by over-thinkers each sitting atop the their own boulder, pondering. The world is as populated by over-thinkers as Iowa is populated by rows of corn, and the nearest over-thinker might be as close as your elbow. Only your thinking blocks the view. But here we are, the rest of the over-thinkers, also surmising, wondering, wandering solo through ideas as if exploring a maze of greenery, maybe calculating by woods, or perhaps if you’re more organized and linear in your thinking, discerning through symmetrical fields of towering maize, applying meaning willy-nilly, though we will never admit the willy-nilly part. © Kimberly Williams For the next few issues, I'd like to feature some of the translation work that Jaime Herrera and I have done. These poems come from the book Nuevos Himnos a la Noche by Benjamín Valdivia.
*** Benjamin Valdivia has published numerous books of poetry in Spanish along with many works of drama. He has edited many anthologies and won several awards including the Premio de Poesía por la Accademia Internazionale il Convivio, enItalia, in 2003. He also works as a literary translator and is a full-time professor at University of Guanajuato. He expects to visit the Phoenix area this spring to read and share his work in the U.S. http://www.valdivia.mx/ *** At the Hour of the Sea Over the sacred sheet on the set table, same as sustenance, you search for a navy blue sea, a warped conch in which you can find shelter with me. We are standing on the mud in front of the reconstructed balcony. That is where love takes its destiny of doubling--so back and forth as the lightning rays of the dark monsoon. Two days in one instant: the middle of the night. Two bodies in the only living entity over the undulating sheet at the hour of the sea. On Such a Day In the afternoon of a day on such a day as this I entered the secret stronghold of your consummation Broken lamps and frayed walls were for us paradise and were homeland for our secret. Above, spores burned left there by the rain in the rotted beams Below the bodega was buried that supplied a city And in the air scratched – very scratched – from so many swallows and scandalous youth and shadows, resonated a successive destiny: the drawbridge to enter by the ladder of a tower where splendor reigns. ***Jaime H. Herrera bio: Jaime H. Herrera is currently a Professor of English at Mesa Community College. Jaime is a product of the Juárez/El Paso border, a place he holds dear and which embodies who he is, as much Mexican as American, as much Mexicano (and mexinaco) as he is estadounidense (and gringo). He is bicultural and bilingual (and speaks a good Spanglish too). He knows that the border is a space that cannot be fenced. La frontera es un espacio que no se puede cercar. He loves translation, the back and forth between the two languages. Also. he writes his own poetry in both English and Spanish and has written a novel (as of yet unpublished), tentatively titled This is not Juárez. When he dies, he wants his ashes spread right in the middle of the bridge that connects Juárez and El Paso, his ashes blowing in both directions. For the next few issues, I'd like to feature some of the translation work that Jaime Herrera and I have done. These poems come from the book Nuevos Himnos a la Noche by Benjamín Valdivia.
Info on BV: Benjamin Valdivia has published numerous books of poetry in Spanish along with many works of drama. He has edited many anthologies and won several awards including the Premio de Poesía por la Accademia Internazionale il Convivio, enItalia, in 2003. He also works as a literary translator and is a full-time professor at University of Guanajuato. He expects to visit the Phoenix area this spring to read and share his work in the U.S. http://www.valdivia.mx/ *** Huéhuetl We are surrounded there by representations: symbols of the tired times, nebulous stelae of the historic. The sun stone with secret etchings, grinding mortars which are too ancestral, man made islands of unusual cultivation. That Atlantic figure the music joined to its past. But we are there when that huéhuetl forges in its thunder the turn of the stellar feathers. Music and movement: flower in the singing. And in the middle of the furious precision the black cloud sketches your quiet labor and instructs me in the offering of yourself at the central point of mid-day. A Tapestry In the sunset a web of extraordinary purple: strings of night and end of day armored in the warp of the sun or the sound: Crackle of the spectacle, scream of dying star or kiss since today. It is the radiant weave of violets in their rough grays and their definitive reds and amethysts. From there you take the voice by which you weave a happy moment: a blossoming space of afternoon as when in the strings of the night burn the weave of a tapestry. ***Jaime H. Herrera bio: Jaime H. Herrera is currently a Professor of English at Mesa Community College. Jaime is a product of the Juárez/El Paso border, a place he holds dear and which embodies who he is, as much Mexican as American, as much Mexicano (and mexinaco) as he is estadounidense (and gringo). He is bicultural and bilingual (and speaks a good Spanglish too). He knows that the border is a space that cannot be fenced. La frontera es un espacio que no se puede cercar. He loves translation, the back and forth between the two languages. Also. he writes his own poetry in both English and Spanish and has written a novel (as of yet unpublished), tentatively titled This is not Juárez. When he dies, he wants his ashes spread right in the middle of the bridge that connects Juárez and El Paso, his ashes blowing in both directions. Mathematics In which I try reducing you to numbers: I. Nothing is complete until I’ve shared it with you. II. Two chocolate bars melting in the back seat. Two teacups from the shelf, too high to reach. III. The scarring on your chest. IV. Studies suggest this could be the hottest year on record since 1880. And as we age, the ground may come to a boil, burning the flight from our feet. Still, I think: how lucky are we to pilot the same combusting star? V. The feather-touch of fingers in dawnlight. Handspeak To the man in my poetry class, I was talking with a friend, reflecting on the pristine pages of her portfolio. I gushed over the unconditional love radiating from her stanzas. Her poetry made me feel safe, warm, and all fuzzy in my Feeling Cabinet(™). I was excitable, talking too fast. All you saw were my hands. You limped up beside us and reached right into our conversation. You curled your white fingers around the slimness in my wrist like the cold, bony cuffs of convention. You held firm, putting an end to the error I didn’t even realize I made: “Okay,” you said, “Now talk.” I talk with my hands. It’s one of those ADHD things I can’t really control about myself, like bouncing my leg, forgetting my own name, or tuning out tired poems about the socially divisive evils of millenial technology. My hands are so constantly in motion, I barely notice their punctuating posture when I speak. My hands are mediums, possessed by festive ghosts who have made it their undying duty in this mortal coil to turn my social life into a one-man puppet show. Only, you thought this show needed one man more. I realise now, in this late hour, you were right. THANK YOU for inserting yourself into my conversation. Before you so boldly jumped in to save the day, I only had ten fingers, an other woman, and my train of ---umm like, thought to keep me on track. THANK YOU for taking on this task when you saw my hands twisting and turning through the tides of turbulence. You’ve been doing this a lot longer than me, which obviously makes you the authority on how a moderately attractive young lady ought to conduct her own body in a precariously prestigious setting such as Glendale Community College. Where would I even be without #OldWhiteMen to educate me? Granting me permission to speak, stifling all the egregrious gestures that make a girl unique? Silly me. Silly millenial with my silly smartphone and silly Handspeak. To the man in my poetry class: Thank you for reminding me. I’m sorry. I forgot. Forgot my place, Forgot my thought. These hands are far too loud to be anything but silly. Aren’t you glad you caught me so you could set me free? What could a silly girl like me ever be without a man around every corner to take her wrists and lead? Sweetie are you a boy or a girl? d’you prefer pink or blue? you don’t want to turn out gay do you? sweetie, what if somebody tries to hurt you? come on, please? can’t you pose pretty for me? can’t you tuck your teeth together and smile, smile, smile so sweet you split at the seams? can’t you spare us the responsibility of “he” and “she?” can’t you pick one and make it easy for me? are you a boy or a girl? what’s with that face? d’you have something to say? what can I do to make you feel safe? and by the way, is it okay if I use your dead name, I mean, your birth name? just for today, just while they can see, just in front of The Family. they’re going to ask, so please forgive me: are you a boy, or a girl? how does it feel to be different? when did you choose to be different? why do you always need to act so different? who did this to you; where did he go? what did he touch to make you different? oh. is that it, sweetie? are you still dangling from a sick man’s string? is he the thing you’re digging out of your head? is he at the end of every wire cut red? then answer me this: are you the girl he hurt or the boy he created? with the best of intention, I ask: sweetie, are you his victim or his invention? are you a boy, or a girl? are you my daughter, or are you dead? are you some kind of confused, or just sick in the head? are you sure this is you? are you doing okay? is there a pill you can take to make this go away? to make you feel better so we can get through the day without confronting this thing? this “gender neutral” thing this “transgender” thing this confusing and delicate and sensitive thing. this thing dripping out of your eyes and between your thighs. sweetie is it asking too much for you to be happy? God gave you that body. is that not reason enough to be happy? © Jamie Lee Heath KEY
Grief Work* 1) After your bacchanal brother, you kiss the slick forehead of the muscleless rind you once loved. 2) The thick Hennessey once betrothed to your brother’s coal lips smolders the hearth of your throat. It was either that or the pungent taste of embalming fluid. How it settles into the skin, undoes fallen flesh fresh, the beloved’s carcass a plum plump with its coral steel, the beauteous fruit profuse in its bounty, ripe with the vitric lye, the husk of him an unwavering gray & the transient taste of mortality that true love’s kiss won’t awaken when the black body becomes slack. 3) You attempt to quantify your grief. 4) He filled your phlegm with asterisks. 5) The crescent scar on his left hand? *After Natalie Diaz / After Franny Choi His Moon Was a Straitjacket, a Big White Pill in the Sky & his mother’s corazón was an asilo soon after he broke. He slumbered there. Scabrous assassin, that he was. Savage dragon whom Beowulf slew. Crickets would fidget in the fluorescent dusk as we—(the townspeople)—gathered to see what the fuss was. Was it seething sanity that caused us to look upon the elusive fugitive with chagrin, or the pallid deaths of a thousand nights which caused us to bind our minds? He was our own trapecio who balanced on the backs of cricket cadavers, their pequeñas tripas festooned the floor like Frida’s roots. It was late April when we watched him unfold like the throat of Gehennah to devour us. Abundantes infieles. Cosecha de traidores. The night we admitted him, his sky was an oil slick gown of confusion. His official diagnosis was psychosis when he returned to us lucid & luminous like Gabriel’s annunciation. I touched the slender shoulder of his holy ghost as if to say: I’m sorry there was no wake for the death of your brain, that rotting waste -land deteriorating into chemically imbalanced absconds no man can trek without a canteen of sanity. Crickets twisted their little laments into the tapestry of night, shucking small songs under the waxen trance of moonlight. The day his lunacy went into hibernaculum we all celebrated, but what was the point? There was no more village to burn to cinder anyhow. Report on a Landscape with [ ]’s Psychotic Break Inside or Scene Between Mi Primo y La Luna Cerebral cemetery Axis of asymmetry Pseudo-alive psyche Rorschach’s quandary Quasi-contortionist botany Knuckles bloomed To oleander doom Caesuras like wrists Trysts of flesh and bone The torso a brown taffeta gown The skin split into sonetos Each sinew a volta The secret of syllables The pyre of pentecost The tensing of tongues The voguing of Vulgate The servitude of Salomé Matins’ bread of days Vespers’ meat of nights Manic meads of in between Pallid puppeteering Altogether moon muddled The dissipation of luna moths Ascetic apparition Aesthetic and ascension Calvary and cutlery he is Barbed diadem reduced To cranial coronet of sorrow Still Life with Human Immunodeficiency Virus Mississippi girl is the first child to be “functionally cured” of HIV, researchers announced Sunday. --Saundra Young, CNN, Mar. 4, 2013 Mississippi baby scientists thought was “functionally cured” of HIV now has detectable levels of the virus in her blood, her doctors say. --Saundra Young and Jacque Wilson, CNN, Jul. 11, 2014 Its precious blood is poured everywhere - soothing, healing, saving. —St. Benedicta of the Cross Music forces its eyes shut. At the reprise of a lullaby, the hearth of her chaste throat opens only to be formicated by a swarm of sloe, scorching locusts: the small sodomites perish in the seventh circle of her guttural hell. In a dream, she sucks her thumb & blood doesn’t trickle out like merlot, chafed notes dripping from a red mandolin. In lieu, a god’s knot of ichor floods her mouth. Phantom cellos in lab coats won’t climax to the dirge of her cries tonight. Black diatribes won’t leap from their lips like an achromic doe into a thicket of flickering thorns. ***Jabari Jawan (he/him/his) is a black Xian man, poet, performer and teaching-artist from Chicago, IL. He loves God, Baldwin, Talenti's sea salt caramel gelato and his mama. He currently lives in Phoenix, AZ where he often serves as a consulting teaching-artist and workshop facilitator for Black Poet Ventures. His poems are forthcoming from The Shade Journal and Vinyl Poetry. You can follow him on Twitter @thedarktrapeze. Letters from Home
By Dan Ramirez Grounded by the weather, we had to shout over the noise of the rain hitting the tents, the fuel canisters, the maintenance hangers, to have a conversation. Our helicopter looked like a ghost ship sitting on the flight line. Phillip, my crew chief, sat next to me on the porch, smoking a Tiparillo. He took one last drag and flicked it into the sheet of water cascading off the roof. Pfft! The butt sizzled and disappeared. We were thinking the same thing-- we had a squad of Recon brothers in the northern highlands waiting to be evacuated. They had been in the bush three weeks. We were three hours late. He turned to me. "Think it's raining on Recon, too?" I shrugged. "Think they're still there?" I replied. Phillip lit another Tiparillo. We sat. Our war was boredom and routine, punctuated by episodes of terror and an opportunity to die. Like waiting for an earthquake. Never able to relax. "You hear from Louise?" I smiled. Phillip knew the latest letter from Louise was sitting in my pocket. She faithfully wrote me while I was overseas, keeping me informed of the neighborhood happenings. "Yeah," I said, tapping my breast pocket. "Wanna hear the latest?" He nods, smiling. Phillip was a guy from small town and a small family. These letters, chronicles of my lively neighborhood life, had become his novellas, his soap opera. I begin. "....So, I got some chisme for you..." "What's chisme?" Phillip asked. "Gossip. The latest." He nods. I continue. "Didn't you date Mona Morales in school? And she dumped you for Rafa Gutierrez? (BooHoo) I don't know if you know, but they got married, had a little girl, moved into a duplex on Meridian (where Peggy Gonzalez lived, remember?) and Rafa went to work for the gas company. They seemed to be doing OK, but Mona stayed fat after the baby, and Rafa didn't like the way she cooked or the baby always crying, (he just didn't like being a father, or married,) so he yells at Mona and smacks her around. This gets to be a habit according to my friend who lives across the street from them. Mr. Morales finds out what's what with his daughter, shows up at their door with Crazy Tony as backup and proceeds to beat the snot out of Rafa, the dog that he is. Rafa missed two days of work, recovering." Phillip interrupted." Mr. Morales was you baseball coach?" "Yeah. And the neighborhood barber." "Mr. Morales told him that the next time he hears Rafa was hurting his daughter, he'd cut Rafa into little pieces and feed him to his roosters. Rafa left town a few days later. Oh, Crazy Tony says hi. He's doing weekend time at county and claims he found Jesus. Then he asked if he could see my chi chis! Pig" I refold the letter, putting it back into my pocket. He puffed on the Tiparillo."You know Rafa?" "Rafael. His family came late to the neighborhood. I always thought he was a jerk, but Ramona fell pretty hard for him." He puffs. The sweet smoke hangs in the air. "What does she look like?" "Who? Louise?" No, no. Ramona." "Louise says she got fat, but when I dated her, she had more curves than Route 66." We laugh. "According to you, all the girls in your neighborhood look like that." "Only the ones I'm interested in." Listening to the rain, I smiled at my memories. So did Phillip. © Dan Ramirez School Daze By Dan Ramirez It's a casual conversation, before class starts. "How do say your name?" "Faro." To my quizzical look, he adds, "Like Egypt." He smiles self-consciously. Pharaoh? My time in Vietnam and his features tell me he is from southeast Asia. "Where are you from?" "Fullerton... California." "You were born in Fullerton?" He shakes his head. "No. Vietnam." "Where?" He leans forward. "You know Vietnam?" "Yes. I was there during the war." "Where?" "Hue. I was a helicopter pilot." Faro leans back, nods. "At Phu Bai." "Yes, yes." Now we're talking. “You’re from Hue?' I ask, not waiting for an answer. "I spent time there. Hue. Phu Bai. It's a beautiful city. Old." "Lots of damage from the war," he says. I nod. I remember flying over Hue, along the Perfume River, seeing the intricate facades and statuary of old temples, castles and monasteries riddled with bullet holes, walls scorched from battle fires, roofs collapsed from artillery shells. After Tet. And then I remember flying across the highlands, Johnnie Black my copilot, buzzing villages at 80 mph, thirty feet off the deck, scaring children and mama-sans, spooking animals, scattering loose food and cooking fires. Dropping hand grenades onto the terraced fields, disrupting irrigation flow. Crazed cursing and maniacal laughter filling my headset. My crew. Fear. Fatigue. Frustration. Boredom. And I remember the bar girls at the Sunset Trip. Small women in tight skirts and sweaters, impossibly high heels, bouffant hairdos, "eyes-round" makeup, trying to look like Betty or Candy or Joyce from back home. And I remember frantic five dollar sex. Faro gives me an empty look. He's not interested in taking a trip down memory lane. Perhaps he's too young to remember. Maybe he doesn't want to offend. Or maybe his sister, mother was one of the bar girls. The conversation wilts. Faro looks away. I concentrate on reading the class handout. The sounds and smells of that time worry the edges of my memory. I spent twenty months in Faro's country, destroying it to defend it. Forty years ago. © Dan Ramirez ***As a young man, Dan ignored the voice of his writing Muse, plunging into the work force, working to be “a success”. His intermittent writing "career" was littered with journals filled with more empty pages than words. Years passed. Life changed. Business success, a supportive family and the Creative Writing Program at the local JC, Glendale Community College, allowed Dan to retrieve, like a dusty old manuscript, his writing career. Forty years after high school, he took his first creative writing class at GCC. This Fall, four years later, Dan will receive his Creative Writing Certificate from Glendale Community College, Glendale, AZ. Boy, the Dog
By Dan Ramirez Boy was the neighborhood dog. He was terrier sized, with a terrier temperament- smart, energetic, feisty. He was black and white, of indeterminate ownership. My Mother said he belonged to the Ortegas, my father said the DeCicis. I thought he belonged to the Greenwoods, who recently moved to Temple City. Mike Munoz told me his family thought Boy belonged to us. He was friendly with everyone in the neighborhood except the newest addition, the Mullers, who threw rocks at him or chased him with a broom if he came around their house. The Mullers had arrived from Cincinnati with two cats, one of which promptly disappeared. As Boy was a known cat killer, he was blamed for the loss of the precious Precious. I personally thought that any cat named Precious did not belong outside and probably got run out of the neighborhood by the other cats as an embarrassment to catdom. Boy would come to the back door to visit my mother, barking his greetings-- and begging for scraps. "You have a visitor," I would tell her, sitting at the kitchen table doing my homework. "I know, I know," she would say excitedly. "He knows I have something for him." She digs through our packed fridge, Boy's barking becoming more insistent. "Hold on, hold on. I've got some yummies for you." Gristle, steak bones, old spaghetti, menudo scraps-- gulping, grinding, gnawing, Boy gratefully made it all disappear. Boy and my Mother would sit on the back stairs together after he ate, Boy letting Mom hunt for fleas in the white fur around his neck, popping them between her nails while whispering, first scolding him for having fleas then providing tips on how to avoid getting pulgas. Sometimes she would softly sing to him. Boy would sit very still, ears attentive to her words, panting quietly, tail slowly wagging. They were friends. Soon after Boy becomes a regular at the back door, my mother sets out water and an oval rag rug on our front porch. A couple nights a week we heard Boy climb the stairs and cross the porch, his nail clicking on the smooth cement. A noisy, slurpy drink, a small thud as he settled, and Boy was in for the night. Mom always kept the water can full and the old rug neat and shaken. Late summer afternoon. I was sitting at the kitchen table eating a PB&J sandwich after a hard day at the public pool. My mother was puttering in the kitchen. "I almost hit Mrs. Muller today," I mumbled around sandwich bites. My mother stopped. "What? "I said, I almost ran into her. Her car. On my bike. Me and Boy were on our way home when Mrs. Muller came shooting down her driveway in her big blue Chrysler." "Don't ride so fast." "I was tired and it was hot. I wasn't going very fast." Pause for a bite. "I don't think she saw us. She just went rolling down the driveway and into the street." "Us? Who were you with?" "Boy. I just told you." "Did she say anything?" I just told you. She didn't see us." "OK. Well, be careful. Mrs. Muller's new here and is still getting used to the neighborhood." That night, she told my Father about the Mrs. Muller incident. "She's a terrible driver," he said. "She just learned to drive when they moved here from Cincinnati. She's still not very good at it. And that boat she drives.... Tell him to be more careful around their house and driveway. Especially when he's on his bike." It was early Saturday morning and I had just said a drowsy good bye to my father. He was going into work for a half day of overtime. Now he was back in the house, speaking to my mother in a low voice. "Get an old blanket. Quick. I don't want the kids to see." "What?" She asked. "Bring it outside," he replied, closing the front door. I rolled out of bed and looked out the front window. My father was standing at the end of our driveway. Something black and white was at his feet. I looked closer. My mother came down the driveway, holding an old bedcover. She stopped and her hand went to her mouth. We realized at the same time that the black and white lump was Boy, and he wasn't moving. My father took the bedcover and wrapped Boy in it, carrying him to our backyard. Mom stood in the driveway for a bit, hands occasionally wiping her eyes. She came into the house and made a phone call to my father's work, telling them that he would be a little late. She listened for a moment, then said good bye and hung up. I put on my slippers and met her in the kitchen. Her eyes were red. "Boy's dead." "Mrs. Muller killed him." She looked startled. "Why do you say that?" "Well, she didn't like him, thought he killed Precious and Dad said she's a terrible driver." "Don't say that. Maybe he got killed crossing the street." I shook my head. "No. Mrs. Muller did it." I went out the kitchen door to our backyard. My father stood in the middle of our yard, Boys' covered body sitting at his feet. "Boy's dead," he said. "Mrs. Muller did it." He looked at me. "I want to bury him. Here. In our yard." I point to the big lemon tree in the yard. "He used to like to snooze under the lemon tree during the day." I smiled. "Sometimes he would snap at the bees that were around the tree. I told him to watch it, not to get stung, but he still did it. I guess the bees bugged him." I pointed to the house. "And Mom can see him from the kitchen window. Wave hi, you know." He nodded his head. "Ok. Get the shovel." We dug a hole for Boy. Into the hole with his wrapped body I added his water can so he wouldn't get thirsty. We covered him with dirt, topped with heavy rocks so no animals could dig him up. Mom didn't join us, but I think she watched from the kitchen window. My father kept it simple. "He was a happy dog." Back in the house, Dad cleaned up, gave Mom a long hug and went off to work. I also gave her a long hug. "He was a happy dog," I told her. I was riding home from the park a couple days later, when Mrs. Muller came bombing down our street in her big blue Chrysler, too fast, not seeing me, eyes rigid on the road, strangling the steering wheel. The right headlight was smashed. © Dan Ramirez Dragged In Cat By Dan Ramirez I found the black cat one morning, thrown on the front steps like a dirty gray rag. I thought he was dead, until I noted breathing and saw a green eye studying me. I bent to examine him. He hissed a warning, but had no strength to actively resist. Some thousand dollar weeks later, at the guilt-induced urging of the vet, I reclaimed him. Clean, free of parasites, re-hydrated, infection free, (some combination of infected cuts from fighting and bacterial cat fever had brought him to my door,) and newly neutered, he still did not present the picture of grand health. Gaunt, he moved slow, with a limp, missing jumps and had a miserable meow. If a cat's purr is akin to the sound of a well tuned V8, his purr skipped on a few cylinders. When we got home I placed him on my porch where I had found him weeks before. I expected him to wander off from where he came, with a minimum of thanks. The next morning I opened the door and found him curled up on the welcome mat. He gave me a feeble meow, creakily stretched and slowly limped into the house. He paused at the kitchen door, looking at me expectantly. He meowed. "What?" I asked him. Another meow. "What?" A weak, just audible meow. Oh. I cooked us a concoction of eggs, shredded chicken and cheese. He ate heartily , drank water from a coffee cup I put out, cleaned himself. I followed him as he explored the house. The corner of my bed was flooded with sunlight. After he failed twice, he let me lift him onto the bed. He felt bony and didn't weigh very much. He positioned himself in the sun. A little more cleaning, the black cat slept. I checked on him through the day. The sunlight moved. He slept. Turned on his back, feet in the air, he softly wheezes. Late in the afternoon, working at my desk, something furry glides across my calves. I check and see two big green eyes looking up at me. A small meow as he ambled toward the kitchen. I've been adopted. Or hired. © Dan Ramirez ***As a young man, Dan ignored the voice of his writing Muse, plunging into the work force, working to be “a success”. His intermittent writing "career" was littered with journals filled with more empty pages than words. Years passed. Life changed. Business success, a supportive family and the Creative Writing Program at the local JC, Glendale Community College, allowed Dan to retrieve, like a dusty old manuscript, his writing career. Forty years after high school, he took his first creative writing class at GCC. This Fall, four years later, Dan will receive his Creative Writing Certificate from Glendale Community College, Glendale, AZ. |
Kimberly WilliamsKimberly has been fortunate to travel to half the Spanish-speaking countries in the world by the time she was forty. As a traveler into different cultures, she has learned to listen ask questions, and seek points of connections. This page is meant to offer different points of connections between writers, words, ideas, languages, and imaginations. Thank you for visiting. Archives
October 2020
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