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With mop in one hand,
cocktail in the other,
at 9:00 a.m. or night,
flies swatted,
roach corpses swept.
Lola Beltrán belts “Mi ranchito”
through house speakers
from room to room.
I hum off key.
Mares fed, dogs let out,
sun beating on the flat roof,
moon rising behind a cloud—
verses take form.
From My Book of the Dead, copyright © 2021 Ana Castillo, published by University of New Mexico Press, 2021.
I imagine him lying on his back,
gaze to the azure sky, white clouds—unlike
this grey New York on a rain-drenched day.
Notebook at his side, sheets splotched from an ink pen,
pipe in hand, hat off, wispy hair rustling in the wind.
Leaning on an elbow over wet dandelions, he slaps
at a buzzing fly. The poet reaches for language
until evening falls.
Translation by Tyehimba Jess with Ana Castillo
Tic, tic, tic,
tic, tic, tic…
A stab
in the chest of the country
and the night didn’t blink
that Valentine’s Day.
A tic, tic, tic fell on the roof
and no one slept, not my love, not the dog, not me
with the news of the latest massacre.
Seventeen children lost their lives.
Students, poets, leaders of the future,
it was seventeen souls that time.
Having a light supper of peanut butter and wild berry jam
on water table crackers while watching PBS,
a woman who wrote a book came on.
She talked about married Indian women,
her curiosity about them.
They were private, at first, she said.
It took time to gain trust
and signed consents,
everything on the up and up, you understand.
How bloody “Margaret Mead” of her,
how “Jane Goodall,” I thought,
going over to make tea, draw blinds,
bring in the dogs for the night.