Being Carmen’s Daughter
Primero it’s hablando in whatever language
fits your need at the moment.
It’s stories about an unbalanced spirit-seeing
grandmother, about crinoline-ruffled slips
covered in Caribbean floral prints.
It’s baby daughter to a baby daughter.
It’s your best outfit and shoes made
to last more than a decade.
It’s becoming a repository of family recipes.
It’s laughter louder than everyone else
in the room, ghosts in the corner
speaking of the dead with reverence and wonder.
It’s dreams about weddings meaning
death is around the corner.
It’s Catholic hymns and rose-scented rosaries.
It’s Virgin Mary litanies.
It’s food and arthritic hands
pressing milk out ground coconut.
It’s clean, it’s bleach and mops
and vacuums and no dust and
“I have to go home and clean.”
It’s “Keep your legs closed,
don’t trust anyone not even your own feet.”
It’s “Don’t depend on any man.”
It’s “I wish I could have’s”
that bloom break and bleed
in unfulfilled unheard possibilities.
Copyright Credit: Mayda del Valle, "Being Carmen's Daughter" from The University of Hip Hop. Copyright © 2017 by Mayda del
Valle. Reprinted by permission of Northwestern University.
Valle. Reprinted by permission of Northwestern University.
Source: The University of Hip Hop (Northwestern University Press, 2017)