New Works: A Sampler
Here are some new works for your enjoyment and commentary. There will be new works offered throughout the year.
New Flash Fiction (795 words)!
The Hill
Grandmother’s dying words were, “The piano in the forest.”
Uncle Tito insisted that she had said, “The peanuts of the Moors first.”
The relatives all dismissed her last words because Grandmother had been on fire with a fever that came from nowhere and moved inside her keyhole-shaped head.
“But,” I protested, as men and women began weeping in the living room and only stopping to refuel their drinks, “she wasn’t talking to us. The sky is crowded with listeners”
“You’re 21 now,” said Aunt Mona. “Too old to believe in ghosts.”
The room suddenly crossed itself. They didn’t want her spirit to be trapped inside her tiny, dark home. Who would buy it then? The expected inheritance was already spent, mostly on upcoming weddings and funerals.
“Maybe, Grandmother was talking to herself,” interjected timid cousin Andrea. It was obvious that she had been cutting her own bangs again.
Just then Father Damian entered the room and was ushered into the most comfortable chair in the house. He had been summoned when we had no doubt that grandmother was slipping away from us. That expression reminds me of a kite being claimed by winds in heights most of us will never know. Uncle Alfredo nursed his eviction in the kitchen where we heard him opening beers. Everyone talked to the young priest who had already headed many a death parade since our parish was practically made up of Teddy Roosevelt babies. He raised his hands and everyone bowed and crossed themselves. I was trying to slip closer to the kitchen, a beer sounding good.
“Mrs. Rojo is dead,” he said with his eyes closed. We all looked at each other without saying a word. “Mrs. Rojo is now an angel. She always wanted one as a pet.” Saying that, he asked for some wine as the relatives admired the priest’s deep voice of authority. It almost didn’t matter what he had said. The men and the women never admitted publicly that he was a handsome man, someone surely made in God’s image. I pictured him in a figleaf, but with all the priest sex scandals, and me being gay, there was no real space left for fantasy.
Mama was finally told to call 911 and then to comb her hair (Aunt Soledad’s command).
It was my exit cue and I escaped to one of Uncle Alfredo’s monologues. To my surprise, it wasn’t about his mother in the bedroom right above our heads. This time he wanted to talk about Betsy Ross—History Channel watching this week?
“Hombre,” he began, “I had this dream last night. It wasn’t prophetic.”
He launched into it before I could reply. “I’m talking to her, one on one. Betsy Ross, this is salsa, a liquid version of the hips. Pero, tienes que bailar. Dancing is practically a law now. We don’t sew anymore. We have prisoners in China to do that. ¿Una copita de Bacardi? A shot won’t kill you. Puerto Rico has a flag, even though it’s not a country. It’s not many things: not a state, Latin, not North or South America. Salsa is a mix. No, Betsy, hija—there are no Mariachi bands in this poem. I’m not Mexican. You’re no longer British. There is candy with your picture that is eaten all around the world. You need a makeover. You need a queer eye for the straight puritan. Pero, niña, I told her, it’s easy to shake like a tambourine. Just let go and let history do its own thing while you shake your all-American beautiful ass. Then I woke up.”
“You just talked?”
“Hey Señor Dirty Mind, yes,” Uncle Alfredo grinned.
Just then a crew ran into the kitchen. Grandmother’s body was being hauled away and no one wanted to see that part. We could hear Father Damian shouting out orders, “Not feet first out of the house. She has to be able to see where she is going.”
Uncle Tito spilled his wine on the floor.
Uncle Alfredo said, “I think I have a dream hangover.”
Mama poked her head in. Her hair was shiny like in a shampoo commercial selling the allure of apples off the branch. “I’ll call when I need a ride back. They have to make sure she’s dead.”
Aunt Margo replied softly, “Ask them how much it costs for a resurrection. I cooked too much rice and beans again”
I watched the van vanish over the hill, over the mild attempt to meet heaven halfway, the hill like a green veil between us and the dead. Father Damian stood next to me and I was afraid that we were turning into gargoyles that very moment. He put his arm around me and we didn’t speak. That was his best sermon.
Short-Short Play:
Not-Sea
(On one of many Florida Key Islands)
Merman: (struggling to shore) So this is not-sea.
Fisherman: You from the city? We don’t get tourists here very often.
Merman: Atlantis.
Fisherman: Last time I was in Atlanta, there was a child murderer.
Merman: I feel undressed without surface blue or deeper black.
Fisherman: Let me get my camera (turns around, searches bags)
Merman (dives back into the sea): Not-sea is not the sea.
Fisherman: I left it at the hotel, hello? (He returns to fishing, a beat).
Merman (returns): This is not-sea, right? I can’t return and be doubted.
Fisherman: Nazi?
Merman: Light eaters.
Fisherman: Yes, the sea is full of teeth.
Merman: Star guards.
Fisherman: It’s a little early for beer, but what the hell. (Throws a beer can at Merman.)
Merman: What is this?
Fisherman: Guess what?
Merman: Liquid?
Fisherman: Squid is good if you are in love with the one cooking it, comprende?
Merman (drinks beer, shrugs): Tiny sea.
Fisherman: Yes, I come here for the serenity.
Merman (looks at the sun, backs away): Hot.
Fisherman: Hot.
Merman: Where is the holy moon? The white.
Fisherman: Right, right.
Merman: Good.
Fisherman: God, ah he doesn’t always know his place. You are not hearing this from me. I've lost sleep about Noah’s Ark. Why did they take fish as hostages? I mean a flood demands gills.
Merman: Ah no.
Fisherman: No?
Merman: I will tell no one that you have survived the loss of Atlantis.
Fisherman: Roses in Atlanta are very expensive. Are you in love?
Merman: I’ve tried being expansive, yes. I return now and declare you a dream. It frees us of responsibility. Under the light is darkness and under that is pressure, weight, heft. Up here there is no way to stop from sprouting wings.
Fisherman: The bells always ring at noon. To scare away the ghosts of sailors. It’s hard work to forget that we live and die on an island.
Merman (turns and makes to leave): Breathe pure water, brother.
Fisherman: I have more beers, buddy.
Merman: (jumps into the sea).
Fisherman: I come here to avoid dreaming. Who needs all that business? (Suddenly, his fishing line is taught and something fights his hook: the Merman?) You’re not my meal, buddy, not a meal at all, hear me?
(He fights against the invisible force in the sea and then falls off the boat, long pause, silence)
Prose Poem:
Why Andrés Doesn’t Karaoke
“The Cricketeers” was the stupid-ass name of our band, retro-deus ex machina. Our lack of talent gave a constellation or ten many earaches. I played lead guitar and was a chorus of oohs as if I was a stoned owl. Going nowhere, I was in a damn hurry to get there. We gigged, gagged, grew apart, and roped blackouts. The Cricketeers broke up. The lead singer came out. Sometimes, I think I hear him on the blind radio; a voice is a thumbprint in the heart. I’m still here in this shrinking small town with adult book stores that brood like disinherited heirs. Sometimes, I stay home alone and listen to the tyranny of crickets at twilight.
Creative Non-Fiction:
King of the Cockroaches in Kindergarten
I didn’t cry that first day at the overfed school. The tears began a slow-motion week later when I realized this was something permanent, unrelenting. I was told again and again by a woman using a mother’s voice to sit still! Until when? Why?
But no one at school spoke Spanish! Kindergarten (or was it Kinder’s Garden) was like being in the wrong side of a Lincoln Park Zoo cage. The teacher and some children called me names that were obviously hateful although I didn’t understand them. The music of hatred is easy to hear. All kinds of sounds were thrown at me, knives in a secret carnival.
Ashes, ashes, we all fall down, I repeated as best as I could. We’d fall to the dirty floor
and pretended to be dead until the white teacher called us back to the living. ¿Ramón?
she’d say, but I was Junito at home, little one, vulnerable one. Then she would say sternly, “Raymond, don’t make me call your Mother.”
“¿Y la escuela?” asked Mami when I’d arrive at home.
But what could I say about school? I learned to lie and to make up stories how the teacher made us sing all day long. It was a way to avoid talking about daily humiliations, mostly modeled by my teacher so that my class would feel comfortable in feeling superior to us with an accent. Looking back, I now realize that everyone who wasn't white was all grouped together in the back of the classroom or by the corner furthest from the heater.
After our naps, she would put on a record, and tell the white children to clap along. Then the tinny music would start:
(The cockroach, the cockroach / cannot walk).
Go ahead, muchachos, she demanded, do your national dance. The first time I had no idea what she was talking about or to whom.
I looked to the Mexican boys and girls by me and was startled when they started to do the Hat Dance.
But I was Puerto Rican.
But not on that time of day in her classroom.
I learned to jump around my imaginary hat, arms akimbo and learned my first happy lesson in being powerless. I jumped around trying to smash the pretend cockroaches with my feet that felt no longer mine.
How could I tell Mami this? She and Papi always talked about school as if it was Heaven.
“I learned about Mexico,” I told her once too often.
“Pero, niño,” she said, eying me carefully, “doesn’t she know there’s more than one country latina? Maybe I should tell her about Puerto Rico.”
“No,” I said to get away.
And in kindergarten there was only the country of the white children clapping as the brown children danced for them. I was the king of the cockroaches who danced for his people while singing:
La cucaracha, la curacha / no puede caminar.
This would end soon, I thought to myself, in first grade. Little did I know what was ahead of me in school were many years of tyrannies without music or dancing.
New Poem:
Dream Of Visiting
We're
outside of
streets full of potholes and
people spilling out of bars.
life and so I insist he eat
empanadas. He wants to
play pool because he
wants to play the role of
himself. (Why isn't this
a sex dream, oh well). We're
waiting for his limo and
walk past tiny shops on
wheels. I buy a T-shirt
with a green palm tree and
the words:
and soldiers suddenly point
guns at us. Adrenalin
spurs me to
kiss
and the men say, do that back
where your freedom is and
don't ruin our tourist money.
hand as we enter a church
full of black saints wearing
glow and slowed stares.
I give him my T-shirt and he
whispers, is it always like
that for you and I'm mad
as hell.
honks and we jump into it
and
as we zoom towards waking.
Beyond the black windows
there is no
the driver to stop and I
follow him. He wants to
dance in the middle of
the street! This is politics!