at the end of Mass to receive the bread and wine.
But today, when everybody thrusts up from their seats
and faces Father Sean, my ass feels bolted to the pew.
Caridad slides past, her right brow raised in question,
and walks to the front of the line.
Mami elbows me sharply and I can feel
her eyes like bright lampposts shining on my face,
but I stare straight ahead, letting the stained glass
of la Madre María blur into a rainbow of colors.
Mami leans down: “Mira, muchacha, go take God.
Thank him for the fact that you’re breathing.”
She has a way of guilting me compliant.
Usually it works.
But today, I feel the question
sticking to the roof of my mouth like a wafer:
what’s the point of God giving me life
if I can’t live it as my own?
Why does listening to his commandments
mean I need to shut down my own voice?
Church Mass
When I was little,
I loved Mass.
The clanging tambourines
and guitar.
The church ladies
singing hymns
to merengue rhythms.
Everyone in the pews
holding hands and clapping.
My mother, tough at home,
would cry and smile
during Father Sean’s
mangled Spanish sermons.
It’s just when Father Sean
starts talking about the Scriptures
that everything inside me
feels like a too-full,
too-dirty kitchen sink.
When I’m told girls
Shouldn’t. Shouldn’t. Shouldn’t.
When I’m told
To wait. To stop. To obey.
When I’m told not to be like
Delilah. Lot’s Wife. Eve.
When the only girl I’m supposed to be
was an impregnated virgin
who was probably scared shitless.
When I’m told fear and fire
are all this life will hold for me.
When I look around the church
and none of the depictions of angels
or Jesus or Mary, not one of the disciples
look like me: morenita and big and angry.
When I’m told to have faith
in the father the son
in menand men are the first ones
to make me feel so small.
That’s when I feel like a fake.
Because I nod, and clap, and “Amén” and “Aleluya,”
all the while feeling like this house his house
is no longer one I want to rent.
Not Even Close to Haikus
Mami’s back is a coat hanger.
Her anger made of the heaviest wool.
It must keep her so hot.
*
“Mira, muchacha,
when it’s time to take the body of Christ,
don’t you ever opt out again.”
*
But I can hold my back like a coat hanger, too.
Straight and stiff and unbending
beneath the weight of her hard glare.
*
“I don’t want to take
the bread and wine, and Father Sean says
it should always and only be done with joy.”
*
Mami gives me a hard look.
I stare straight ahead.
It’s difficult to say who’s won this round.
Holy Water
“I just don’t know about that girl,”
Mami loud-whispers to Papi.
They never think that Twin and I can hear.
But since they barely say two words
to each other unless it’s about us or dinner,
we’re always listening when they speak
and these flimsy Harlem walls
barely muffle any sound.
“Recently, she’s got all kinds of devils inside of her.
They probably come from you.
I’ve talked to Padre Sean and he said
he’ll talk to her at confirmation class.”
And I want to tell Mami:
Father Sean talking to me won’t help.
That incense makes bow tie pasta of my belly.
That all the lit candles beckon like fingers
that want to clutch around my throat.
That I don’t understand her God anymore.
I hear Papi shushing her quiet.
“It’s that age. Teenage girls are overexcited.
Puberty changes their mind. Son locas.”
And since Papi knows more
about girls than she does
she stays silent at his reply.
I don’t know if it’s prayer to hope
that soon my feelings will drown me faster
than the church’s baptismal water.
People Say
Papi was a mujeriego.
That he would get drunk at the barbershop
and touch the thigh of any woman
who walked too close.
They say his tongue was slick
with compliments and his body
was like a tambor with the skin
stretched too tight.
They say Papi was broken,
that he couldn’t get women pregnant,
so he tossed his seeds to the wind,
not caring where they landed.
They say Twin and I saved him.
That if it wasn’t for us
Mami would have kicked him to tomorrow
or a jealous husband would have shanked him dead.
They say Papi used to love to dance
but now he finally has a spine
that allows him to stand straight.
They say we made it so.
On Papi
You can have a father who lives with you.
Who every day eats at the table
and watches TV in the living room
and snores through the whole night
and grunts about the bills, or the weather,
or your brother’s straight As.
You can have a father who works for Transit Authority,
and reads El Listín Diario,
and calls back to the island every couple of months
to speak to Primo So-and-So.
You can have a father who, if people asked,
you had to say lived with you.
You have to say is around.
But even as he brushes by you
on the way to the bathroom
he could be gone as anybody.
Just because your father’s present
doesn’t mean he isn’t absent.
All Over a Damn Wafer
As repentance for not participating in communion last time,
Mami makes me go
to evening Mass with her every evening this week,
even the days that aren’t confirmation class.
When Communion time comes
I stand in line with everyone else
and when Father Sean places the Eucharist
onto my tongue I walk away,
kneel in my pew,
and spit the wafer into my palm
when I’m pretending to pray.
I can feel the hot eyes of the Jesus statue
watching me hide the wafer beneath the bench,
where his holy body will now feed the mice.
Monday, September 17
The Flyer
“Calling all poets!”
The poster is printed
on regular white computer paper.
The bare basics:
Spoken Word Poetry Club
Calling all poets, rappers, and writers.
Tuesdays. After school.