El poder de la poesía de Denice Frohman

As a kid, my mom used to take me to Puerto Rico in the summertime, and I remember watching my abuela, her name was Teresa and so we called her doña Teresa, which is sort of a formal sign of respect when you reach doña-hood. You know? I feel doña-hood should be a thing in the world! It’s like “get your doña-hood packet,” like your bata and your cafecito, your cane (overall laughing). Slippers. Somebody said slippers, thank you! But that’s true for pre-doña-hood too. I got slippers. You know what I mean? I’m waiting to be adorned with a bata one day.

Anyway, my abuela, doña Teresa – it sounds big in my brain, and I don’t if it sounds the same way to you – but she was every part of doña Teresa. Like you don´t want to mess with doña Teresa! One of the distinct memories that I have, I was maybe 8 or 9, and I remember we were visiting…. My mom and my abuela they don’t come from money. You know? So they grew up working on a coffee farm. And I remember watching my abuela walk with her cane and grab a chicken and kill it with her bare hands. And I never understood why she did that in front of my face (audience laughing). As much as I rep my roots, I am from New York City, we just go to the corner to get some chicken. I don’t know what happens. So I was shook-eth. Literally, and I can’t get rid of that tiny memory. I can’t get rid of it, so I said let me write about this because there is something in it for me. And then, maybe I can understand my mother a little bit better if I understand maybe what doña Teresa was trying to teach me.

“Doña Teresa and the Chicken”

The wooden house in Castañer didn’t come with air
conditioner or anything cool. The heat was its own
kind of music, and so was abuela—demanding,
sharp-tongued. The kind of woman, I imagine
whose teeth grew in because she told them to.
So the chicken never had a chance.
It ran around the backyard, flapping
its black-feathered wings for mercy, for god’s
attention, but Papa Dios knew better
than to get in between a woman
feeding her grandkids. I lo
ked over my shoulder and there she
as, chasing him, like an old l
ver she came back to haunt yelli
¡hijo de puta! ¡sin vergüenza! ¡ven acá!
Her rosary beads slapped against her chest,
over and over like a chant, and you knew everything
in her path was temporary. Even the wind buckled
at the knees, at the sight of a woman
too wise to act like her blood was softer
than it was—and I saw her do it . . . and I think she knew
because the chicken clucked so hard it spit up
its own good throat and she laughed; grabbed it
by the neck and swung it high above her
head like a propeller. All summer I tried,
but couldn’t unsee that. Once, she gutted mom’s
favorite pig with a machete and fed it to her—
on her 12th birthday. Maybe that’s how mama learned
to love us, to kill the thing that feeds you.
Years later, she didn’t go to her best friend’s funeral
or the vecina who mothered her in New York. Barely
made it through abuela’s; I suppose all she had was to love
until death. And no more. But when we got to the funeral
home and saw Doña Teresa lying
in the casket—arms crossed, chin cocked up—
the whole family busted out crying,
wanting her to come back, wanting her to shout:
“Didn’t I prepare you better than this?”

(Applause)

Are we doing alright? Yeah? OK, good. My hope for the writers and the creators in the room is that you live with the poem you want to write down. That would be really awesome, or an idea or a story you want to return to. I am feeling a lot of you have been already working on stuff. You got some drafts in your computer? Shoutout to the roommates! Roommates are important, who are like “what are you working on”? You know what I am talking about?!

Growing up in New York City, if I have to make a recipe of the things from my childhood, which is a good writing prompt “what would you put in the pot”? For me it would be a CD player with cheap headphones, a quart of water, a 50-cent butter bagel – they were fifty cents – a token like the real one, and it would be a piragua, which is also known as a raspado for some communities and also known as a frío frío for the Dominicans. How many of you what I am talking about? OK. Boom. Those of you that don’t know what I am talking about you are about to learn because now it’s not only women history month, but Latinx history month every day. So we just going to learn together.

(Audience cheering)

So, piragua aka raspado aka frío frío, beautiful things about Latina/Latinx community, different names for essentially the same thing. It is a man who is typically with a cart, I don’t know where these carts come from, they keep being very creative…, and there is a block of ice, shaved ice. It’s essentially what you might call a snow cone but it’s not a snow cone because it is a piragua, raspado, frío frío. OK? To quote Erika Badu, “I’m sensitive about my s---.” OK?

Audience laughs)

Growing up I used to get these treats every day in the summer time or spring time. Ya’ll running to the ice cream man, and I am “where is the piragüero?” I’m running toward him. And I remember as I got older the piragüero was harder and harder to find. He was being pushed out of our neighborhoods, even now if you take a picture of the piragüero, the common section in that picture is “where is he?” “What block? What intersection do I need to go to and pull up on to get my piragüero? You know what I mean? It is a relic in our community but it is such a shame that the justification has pushed out our most treasured community members. And the beautiful thing about poems is that the people that you pass on the street every day they don’t get the recognition but as part of our communities they deserve a poem. Poetry says they deserve a poem, it says they deserve to have their story told and celebrated. This poem is a celebration of the piragüero but more than that it is a celebration our parents who work with their hands, both my parents worked with their hands, and I think so much of this country is made, people who worked with their hands... (to the audience) you can clap for that.

(Applause)

It is important that we don’t cast away or demean people who might not have degrees, as much as getting their education, I am so happy you are doing that, getting your academic education, but there are many educations to get in this life. Therefore, I want to celebrate those working with their hands, who make the festivals hot, who make our parties hoy, and really elevate and preserve the piragüero tune.

This is called “A Queer Girl’s Ode to the Piragüero”

(Applause)

“A Queer Girl’s Ode to the Piragüero”

Oh, Piragüero! My first lover.
The only man I ever wanted
anything from. I sprinted half blocks for you, got off
the bus two stops early, took the long way home
just to see: your rainbow umbrella.
Oh, Piragüero!
Candy-cool syrup god
boricua-batmobile
wooden-cart-pushing
bobsled…papi.
When the viejitas ask for the 10th time whether I got un novio
the closest name on my tongue was you! Who else made me break
my neck in two? Who else gave me so much… for a dollar?
Who raised hell when they nicknamed your island
delicacy: snow cone, (or worse) shaved ice?
I trusted you! The hallelujah work of your bare hands
the dirty white kitchen towel you laid over
a fat block of ice and never once did I ask questions.
And when they pushed you off 9th Ave., when you packed
up on 96th, I only saw you after ball games on 131st & 5th.
When the hipsters threw ice in paper cups,
added nutmeg and real ingredients like,
mint leaves, called this an “upscale makeover”
for a poor man’s treat. I wanted to shout out: “No!
Leave my man alone!”

(Applause)

Who else could turn a blue shopping cart
into a 57’ chevy? Or a mom-n-pop shop? Maybe the elotero
on El Centro, the churro ladies by the A train. Maybe my mama
once, the nanny, who sowed curtains for a couple upstairs,
made an office out of her hands, like my pops.
Who cut his saxophone into the velvet flesh
of night, rearranged the altitude
of a Paladium dancefloor and then:
a plump wad of cash, a worn rubber band,
a 401(K) shoe-box, which is to say
praise everything we build.
Under the table—the underworld
of workers and wielders, America’s
thumping baseline, the chorus
of a country where 2-for-1
is the best hook to every good song I know.
Like the way you turn my tongue
into a red carpet, like the first woman I ever loved.
Oh, Piragüero…
you winter my whole mouth,
you conductor of cool.
You’re the only one I know,
the only one who can govern
the thick heat, like a DJ scratching
a glacier, you make the whole city
rock.

(Applause)

my mom holds her accent like a shotgun,
with two good hands.
her tongue, all brass knuckle
slipping in between her lips
her hips, all laughter and wind clap

she speaks a sanchocho of spanish and english,
pushing up and against one another
in rapid fire

see, there is no telling my mother to be "quiet,"
my mother don't know "quiet."

her voice is one size better fit all
and you best not tell her to hush
she waited too many years for her voice to arrive
to be told it needed house keeping

see, english sits in her mouth remixed
so "strawberry" becomes "eh-strawbeddy"
and "cookie" becomes "eh-cookie"
and kitchen, key chain, and chicken all sound the same.

my mother doesn't say "yes"
she says, "ah ha"
and suddenly the sky in her mouth becomes a Hector Lavoe song.

her tongue can't lay itself down fat enough
for the english language,
it got too much hip
too much bone
too much conga
too much cuatro
to two step
got too many piano keys
in between her teeth,
it got too much clave
too much hand clap
got too much salsa to sit still
it's being an anxious child wanting to
make play-doh out of concrete
english be too neat for
her kind of wonderful.
her words spill in conversation
between women whose hands are all they got
sometimes our hands are all we got
and accents that remind us that we are still
bomba, still plena

say "wepa" ... you say "wepa" and a stranger becomes your hermano,
say "dale"
and a crowd becomes a family reunion.

my mother's tongue is a telegram from her mother
decorated with the coqui's of el campo

so even though her lips can barely
stretch themselves around english,
her accent is a stubborn compass
always pointing her towards home

It starts before she gets here
before the stairs tell her she’s alien to a country
that knows her great-grandfather’s Mexican hands all too well.

His fingerprints still echo underneath railroad tracks
and cotton fields from Texas to California where
bent knees and bent hands once picked, plucked, pushed,
worked for more money than he was used to.
But less than he deserved.

For Ana Maria, it begins before the border.
She walks with her two uncles to the desert for one week,
with nothing more than a few gallons of water and
a prayer tucked into their pockets hoping both will last them long enough.

The Sun is an unforgiving god.
But any god is worth having right now.
The wind pushing at their backs, the grunt of gunshots from drug cartels
and the desperation of a job to employ their stomachs.
Both have been uninvited guests at their doorstep.

So they step, step.
Ana Maria’s small hand clutches the bottom of her abuela’s dress.
Her mother waits for her on the other side,
hoping that her face still sings of home like it used to.
Another step, she is too young to know what border means.

She thinks that people, just family
members who haven’t met yet.
After her family arrives, she will learn
there are some borders you can’t cross by foot.

Ana Maria is now ten years old, she’s learned enough
English to translate for her parents but says that her thick
accent is still a problem she tries to fix by leaving in her locker.
When the teacher calls on her to read,
she tries to speak “proper” like “proper” has a sound.

She pushes her tongue down so she doesn’t roll her R’s
but she trips on the flatness of the syllables that bounce with too much salsa.
She tries to rattle out the kinks in her speech
but her tongue is a stubborn dancer.

The two boys behind her don’t know how to do long division,
but they know what a wetback is.
And that Ana Maria has braids,
and that Ana Maria’s hair is thicker than their sisters.
And they don’t know how they know,
but they know how to treat difference when they smell it,
so they say things like, “YO! Go back to your country.”
As if their Irish ancestors never walked through Ellis Island.

Ana Maria is now 16.
Her father works 18-hour days as a dishwasher.
Her mother cleans houses she’ll never get to live in
so that Ana Maria can sit in a college classroom and say, “I am here.”

But her guidance counselor says she can’t get financial aid
or the instate tuition rate because of her status.
She says it like an apology.
Ana wonders if her family ever crossed the border,
or if they are just stuck inside another one, aggravating it like a soul.

Her guidance counselor stands in front of her, with a mouth full of fences.
There are some borders you can’t cross by foot,
but borders I tell her, that can only be crossed by stubborn backbones.

So, when they ask you for your papers, Ana, show them your skin,
wear your tongue like a cape,
throw up your fist like a secret you can’t keep any longer,
they can’t keep you any longer.
Afraid, you can’t ever afford to drop a dream,
so, when they come for you, tell them, in the language that you know best,
that you are not scared anymore!