Transcript: 002 – All About Denice Frohman
Denice Frohman – Charla Cultural – Transcript
Adriana: Welcome to Charla Cultural, a little chat about culture from Asterix Journal and City of Asylum. I’m Adriana Ramirez.
Karla: And I’m Karla Lamb.
Adriana: And welcome to Episode Two.
Karla: It’s all about Denice Frohman.
Adriana: Denice Frohman is a poet, performer and educator from New York City. Her work has appeared in The BreakBeat Poets: LatiNext, Nepantla: An Anthology for Queer Poets of Color, The New York Times, ESPNW and has garnered over 10 million views online.
We’ll begin with the poem Denice Frohman performed at City of Asylum on October 29th, 2019, before the pandemic, of course. And after a quick discussion, we’ll transition to the rest of Frohman’s performance. We’ll then close with what we’re reading and some Remedios for the road. Welcome.
Karla, can you give us a little bit of background on this performance?
Karla: Yeah, Latinx & Proud is a series actually that I founded along with Adri and Malcolm Friend and Eloisa Amezcua. So we started, this was the very first installment. Denice performed with M. Soledad Caballero, Tanya Shirazi, and Zeca Gonzalez. This is like a very exciting series.
Adriana: So I’m a big fan of Latinx & Proud! series at City of Asylum and this was Denice’s very first time performing at City of Asylum, which is always delightful.
Denice: I just want to acknowledge the organizers as well and say, like, what up Pittsburgh? Cause it’s like my first time in your wonderful, beautiful city. Steelers all over. I want to acknowledge the organizers of this particular Latinx & Proud! series. Adriana, and Karla, and Malcolm. Can we clap it up for them as well?
Well, and what a, what a joy, what a treat to read with Tanya and Zeca and, so that as well, so I just want to just want to say that, you know, I think we are at such an interesting, difficult and heartbreaking time in our country’s history. And many of us are feeling the weight of that in many different ways. And I know I’ve been thinking a lot about like, what can these little poems do?
Right? Like what, what, what can my poems do? What can poetry do in the world? And I think whether or not you’re a poet and this is something that I say a lot to young people, I think that we all can, I think there’s a particular call to action right now to build an intentional relationship with language.
We are seeing language weaponized against communities as a way to justify inhumane policies. My friend Favianna Rodriguez, a cultural organizer and visual artist in the Bay has a wonderful talk about how policies and institutions and laws are the last things that change. Right? But that culture is the first thing that we can change.
Right. Storytelling. And I think maybe that’s what poems can do is contribute to a narrative that humanizes and protects the dignity of workers and working class people and immigrants. And those who are incarcerated and families and young people all over the world. So I know I’ve been thinking a lot about that, and I think that that’s what first attracted me to poetry. And I want to say if I was in high school and stumbled into City of Asylum tonight and was in the audience at a series called Latinx & Proud!, I think that I would have found myself a lot sooner. I think that I would not have suffered under the weight of shame and invisibility for as long as I did.
And so I just want to say how important this series is and how lucky I am to be here. I want to, you know, I saw an article today that talked about the babysitters and nannies who went to work in California during…did you see that article? During all the fires happening in California and that police officers and first responders had to turn these nannies away.
And I think a lot about domestic workers and the people in our neighborhoods who are the centerpieces of our neighborhoods. And one of those people, at least growing up in New York City were the street vendors, and not just any street vendor, but a particular street vendor called a piragüero or a piragüera. Now if you’re a Dominican, you call it a friofrio. Right. If you’re Mexican, you might call it a raspado. If you’re none of those things, you might wrongly name it, a snow cone. Okay. It is essentially a snow cone, but it is absolutely not a snow cone. And I hope that this clarifies this for you.
So here’s, as a child of domestic workers, as a child of musicians, right? Like how many people in this room have a loved one or a family member who works primarily or in some capacity with their hands. Right? This poem is for them. This poem is for our parents, for the people who pick our fruits and vegetables for the people who make the block hot. It’s called a Queer Girls Ode to the Piragüero.
Oh, Piraguero! 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, Piraguero!
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 & never once did I ask questions.
& 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 & 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.
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 & 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 & 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, Piraguero…
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.
Adriana: Wow. That was so great.
Karla: Yeah. You got chills!
Adriana: I got so many chills. How about you?
Karla: I wanted to chiar; voy a chiar, yeah, just like cheer or tears and chills. And just like, totally just like moved emotionally and like moved to action.
Adriana: Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, one of the things I like about the piragüero poem is that it really evokes the people in our lives that we interact with; that we don’t necessarily have a name for. And yet that means so much to us. I think about the sushi guy at the Cathedral of Learning back when I used to work at the University of Pittsburgh, like this is a real friendship. So listening to piragüero, it just made me go, oh, there’s so many people in my life that meant so much to me and that I never got to know because I only knew them in this one very specific context.
Karla: Yeah. She, in the poem, she doesn’t name him. She alludes to him as her first lover.
Adriana: I love that. Yeah. Cause there’s an intimacy, there’s an intimacy. What did she, what is the line? Is he winterized my mouth? You know, brought a coldness. I just! Oh, the way that people can impact your life in such specific ways is so strong.
Karla: I love that. I think the conductor of cool. And like DJ-ing the whole city, scratching ice, not only bad-ass line, Denice Frohman, fucking throw down lines like that and like make us have chills.
Adriana: Yeah, why you making us feel?
Karla: Making us feel like I’m in touch with my emotions. Dammit.
Adriana: No one wanted that.
Karla: But like, yeah, now I’m missing Mexico.
Adriana: Oh, no, I know there’s a wonderful protest I went to like 20 years ago at the Alamo, and it had a bunch of we, you know, rasperos and there was a huge sign that said Viva La Raspa, and La Raspa Unida! There was a picture of this giant multicultural snow cone. And I just remember being like, these are my people.
Karla: Yesss.
Adriana: But, let’s talk snow cones for a second because snow cones are important. No raspas, for real. Did you grow up eating raspas?
Karla: Yeahhh. Definitely. Sí!
Adriana: See, oh man. We used to put chamoy, like, I don’t know if you guys know what chamoy is, but it’s like if jelly was spicy. I think is kind of the way of thinking about it. I don’t know. It’s like a hot jelly. You put it on your raspas and ohhh, in Colombia they do condensed milk. So they’ll do like fruit and condensed milk together with the ice and you’re just like * eating sounds.*
Karla: Now I’m thinking of all the Mexican, Mexican desserts that I love, like tres leches and las conchas. And actually like the lady of la panaderia.
Adriana: Awww yeah, I know.
Karla: I never knew her name, you know, but every night, you know, walk a couple blocks and then like buy some conchas and pan blanco from her. And she knew us for yeaaars and like, Cómo está tu familia? You know, all of that, but then I left Mexico, came back to visit and yeah, she was gone.
Adriana: So maybe, maybe our call to action today is to learn the names of the people that have impacted our lives like this, you know? Let that piragüero have a name and let the raspa person have a name and let the panaderia woman have a name and sushi guy needs a name! You know, and I think we should all make it a mission of ourselves right now, especially during these times to appreciate the people that really changed our lives.
You know, I think a lot about how the paletero, there was this guy in San Francisco who lost his cart and lost his paletas and there was a huge fundraiser for him because he was so important to the community. And I think the same thing happened to a guy in Chicago. And I just feel like we don’t realize the impact until they’re gone.
Karla: Yeah. And like Denice says in the poem the underbelly or the underworld of workers, people that work with their hands. Yeah, like my grandma’s hands were so soft and her nails were just like always done, but she’s like, I worked 35 plus years in a factory. You know what? She was like, I earned these hands.
Adriana: Oh, I love that.
Karla: Yeah. Yeah.
Adriana: I earned these hands. That’s such a wonderful statement. She like raised six kids by herself and, you know, like…Saturday…just give me one Saturday with my two kids and I’m like, please take them. I love my kids, but also, oh, I cannot imagine like so many Latino women who had massive families worked like, you know, 40, 50 hour a week jobs and raised good kids, good family and home cooked meals, everything.
Karla: Yeah. Like the matriarch. And the work ethic. And…
Adriana: Just a life of service in that way, and I guess we don’t realize how many of our communities, there are so many people that have dedicated themselves. And I mean, I think I thought that was really interesting. And part of the reason we put the intro in with this poem is because, you know, Denice is talking about October 2019, right. Pre pandemic. And so we’re still thinking about the invisibility of essential workers…
Karla: Oh, shit, yeah…right.
Adriana: In terms of Trump and in terms of those policies, and to think about the context that this poem takes on now a year and a half later after essential workers have been defined and having some ways been lionized, but in other ways, we’ve been thrust in… right into, you know, being cannon fodder during this pandemic. And so what is essential, right. And how essential is that piragüero? Or how essential are, you know, the ice cream trucks and the people that really make our communities thrive.
Karla: I would honestly say like extremely essential, you know, like it being shelter in place. And you hear the little music from the ice cream truck. You know, at clockwork every night, 9, 8, 9 PM. And it’s, it can be comforting.
Adriana: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so that’s, yeah, that’s a big part of it. All I think is, is learning that.
Karla: So in, in Puerto Rico, so she named the raspado frio frio.
Adriana: Uh-huh.
Karla: That’s cute. I never heard of that. Kind of like pio pio or like, you know, like the onomatopoeia of like a little chicken or like a little, un pollito.
Adriana: Yeah, yeah, no, and I, I loved when she talked about gig workers, especially like people with day jobs then who were going at night to like play music or who are poeting in addition to the gig.
You know, like there’s, you know, the, the 9 to 5, and then there’s the life of the artist that happens at night. I remember this conversation with my father when I told him I’m going to be a writer. And my dad said, well, isn’t that like a hobby? Like don’t you have a job? And then on the side you do writing? And I was like, nah, I’m doing this. You know?
And there’s very much a sort of a Latino energy. I think that you work and then on the side you do your arts, but everybody does them.
Karla: Yeah.
Adriana: Like my dad is secretly a poet, even though he’s also like a sales dude, you know? And my mom, like, she’s like, she used to be a judge.
She used to be a lawyer. And now she’s like working with my dad and the family business. But in her spare time, she likes sews things. And she like, I don’t know. She glues flower pedals on things and covers them in glue. It has a name it’s like dec-cro-tage.
Karla: No, it sounds, it sounds like that’s what it’s called for sure.
Adriana: She loves it! Yeah. And it just makes me realize how many of us are artists on the side.
Karla: That’s…oh man. That’s such a heavy, like, I watched my mom put her artwork in the back burner. To be like that full-time mom to have that full-time job. And, yeah, like she had me when she was pretty young, but there was an unfinished painting of hers.
And then years later I liked it unfinished, but I knew that the symbolism, like she sacrificed that and like never went back to it.
Adriana: Yeah. I mean, what is that moment? Where, what is the day that you just decide that I’m not going to art anymore? Or is it a gradual thing? Has it like, you know, does she remember the last time she stopped to create?
Karla: I’m sure he does. Yeah, but she went back to writing, so that’s good. That’s good. Yeah. Yeah.
Adriana: And maybe that’s the beauty of art is you can always come back. No matter how long it’s been, you never really quit.
Karla: And like both of my parents are secret poets. I think I’m, that’s how I discovered poetry and literature. And even some of the music I listened to as an only child for so long. I was just entertained by their bookshelf.
Adriana: So yeah, both my parents can recite poetry, which I think is really fascinating. They’re both like declamation, recitation people. And so like, you know, I know my father would be like, Hombres necios que acusáis a la mujer sin saber la ocasión, which is, you know, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, like, oh my God, it was like some 18th century stuff, 16th century stuff, you know? And so the fact that; but maybe that’s a cultural thing. Cause like both of my parents, my mom, my father is Mexican, and my mom is Colombian and both of them have a very common reader of poetry that they both know, you know…your Cervantes, yes, but also like your Neruda that, and you know, this kind of sense of like our poetic history.
Karla: Yeah.
Adriana: I think it’s so cool when you have this sense of the legacy of the poetry that you’ve heard. Right. Or what is, what is it like literary legacy that your parents had left you, the bookshelves, right? That you grew up with, or that you will inherit to some degree you know, I grew up with a lot of cheesy books, like cheesy. It was like, you know, there was like your 18th century poetry, but then there was like, Ken Follett, or like James Michener books. And I grew up with it, you know, reading these because I would sneak them out of my dad’s room. Sometimes they were tawdry. He’s like super tawdry spy novels. I remember one called The Key to Rebecca that I read way too young. And, but yet…
Karla: It sounds sexy.
Adriana: Yeah, it was, but it was not appropriate for me. And it was very formative. Like I remember years later being like, oh, I remember this part of this book. And so yeah, but I think having a library in your house where people can really come in and dig in and discover is so important for me with my kids. I mean, my kids are toddlers right now, so yeah. But when they get older, you know, they’ll the tawdry stuff is on the high shelf. Yeah. So hopefully they’ll start and at the bottom and just work their way up by the time they’re 18, they’ll be like, what is this?
Karla: And Denice works with kids. Right? She works with youth, and I remember her asking in this performance, like what can poetry do for us? Like, or what is what’s poetry’s, you know, labor of love in our world, our every day. And this is…I think what we’re talking about really hits that. This is something that poetry does for us maybe some subconsciously or subliminally, you know, it’s there all along until we can like, reach those shots.
Adriana: I mean, listen, listening to one poem and we’re like, here’s our parents, here’s obviously being a secret artist. Like there’s so much conversation that one poem can open up for us completely. And I think that’s wonderful.
Karla: Yeah. I wanted to circle back to the, so Denice uses, you know, a lot of Spanish words in her work and my relationship with Spanish in my poetry, specifically, so I stopped italicizing, I stopped translating and that’s like a huge movement right now. And it’s empowerment and it’s identity. You know, if you know you know, and then you’re in the in-crowd. But she was using words like you know, abuelita, novio, and so that made me think about when I talk to my abuelita. She’s always like ¿Cuándo te vas a casar? y Nececito unos nietos. Sorry if this is TMI, but my sister, doesn’t.. eh.. she prefers women. And so my, abulea is like ¿Dónde está tu novio? She is like, Estoy esperando. And then my sister just like, yup, and so like that, those generational, you know, expectations. Cultural expectations. And so, yeah, Denice, you know, in her, in this poem, she’s like my first lover you know, like my, like the woman that turned my tongue into a red carpet, but, you know, she she’s, you know, expressing like…
Adriana: This is the better answer.
Karla: Yeah. Like without exactly saying like, no, abuela, soy queer, you know, or like, she doesn’t have to say that she can just say it in this poem and it’s hard and like making those choices to not tell them abuela, you know.
Adriana: But you have to like, it’s a, it’s a choice for the path of least resistance. So for example, like when I was dating a woman at one point in my life, like, and I went to Colombia to see my grandma and my grandma was like, how was your love life?
How was your heart? And I said, I’m really happy. I’m with someone that’s making me very happy. And she was like, oh, tell me about the boy. And I really, I described the person I was dating as if they were a boy. And I know that on some level, that was like, I’m not sure that I would do that today. You know, this was like 20 years ago. God, I’m old. You know, but like, there’s this moment now where if…I mean, I’m married to a dude, so it complicates everything and it did stop by the way. Once I got married and had kids. Everyone stopped talking. And, and so the question stopped, all of it stopped. And it’s really interesting because, you know, as somebody who was kind of pan-sexually queer, you know, I could have ended up with anybody. It just sort of worked out this way. I have a friend who’s always like bisexual women, blah, blah, blah. And I’m like, well, if 90% of the population is straight and 10% is queer and you’re pansexual… Sorry. But yeah, no, I mean this whole idea of outing yourself to your family versus outing yourself to the public is, is really different.
And I feel like in Latino culture with the emphasis on the like heteronormative, like nuclear family type of thing it’s going to be interesting a generation or two. Like when we are grandmas or that grandma level, are our kids going to be as scared as we were of disappointing, you know, our elders.
Karla: I really hope not and yeah, my sister, you know, is out, so I’m not outing her on our podcast, but right. Like she never necessarily like sat the family down and said it. And I think it was because of like these cultural barriers, the, the fear, you know, that like she was going to get kicked out or whatever.
And like, I, yeah, not to get super overly complicated and dive deep into that topic, but it is, it is something in Central and South American cultures that we have to grapple with, you know, and like later, you know?
Adriana: Yeah. It’s not easy. And even when there is acceptance, like people don’t have the language yet.
Karla: Yeah.
Adriana: And so they will, mis-gender you, they will mis-pronoun you. You they will ask you to be more feminine. Less feminine. More macha, less macha. You know, more butch, less butch, you know, your family really wants you to just fall into this sense of normal because normal is easy. And you know, it’s going to be really interesting to see, you know, when the chickens come home to roost on this, like a couple of generations later, as people are getting, you know, more comfortable being their true selves. What will that mean for how we consider normal?
Karla: Yeah. And, and Denice mentions that like, you know, an intentional relationship with language and my intentional relationship with language is like, okay, I’m really claiming I’m Latina and I’m claiming Latinx. But then I had that moment of insecurity where it’s like, oh shit, all of a sudden an X isn’t correct anymore. It’s like Latin-A.
Adriana: Well that’s if you’re in, so if you’re in Mexico, you would never say X because that doesn’t work linguistically. Right. And the X is such a gringada. So like, you have to be like, so you know, Latino works, Latina works, Latin-e works, but if you are in the U.S. And you say Latin-e, everyone’s gonna look at you like you’re crazy. So you have to be like Latin-X. Maybe? I use them all interchangeably. I’m the worst. So I’ll be in the middle of a lecture, and I’ll be like, And if you look at it from a Latinx perspective, Latinos feel, and I’m just switching and yet, you know what? I never used Hispanic.
Karla: Yeah, me neither. I’m done with that word.
Adriana: And I don’t even, I couldn’t even articulate what the real problem is with it. Other than, you know, it’s got Spain in it, but so does Latin references, like the Latin language root colonizer? Just the same. So like, what is, why does Hispanic not work anymore? Is it outdated? Is it just…
Karla: I really embraced Chicana because that’s the one that’s closest to me. Like I was born in Mexico and Mexico, so I like that, you know, it’s like very specific though.
Adriana: See whereas for me “chicana” designates something coming out of the labor movement in the 70s and 80s led by Cesar Chavez, the Chicano movement. And so when I think Chicano, I think I am not Chicano, you know, like my family you know for whatever reason, my father was very privileged when he came to the U.S. You know, we, we came in legally through an airport, you know, with visas.
You know, my father owned a business. I did not grow up working class. And so I never identified as Chicana because it was instilled in me, always that that was a very specific political stance and a political movement. And yet I see Chicano being used now just to generally mean like Mexican American woman or Mexican American male. Chicano Chicana. And so, you know, how does that work when it is such a loaded term with a certain history?
Karla: Can I just be like me, you know?
Adriana: Right. Like I’m Mexican and Colombian, which is what most Latinos actually do. Most Latinos do not call themselves Latinos. Most Latinos will say I’m Mexican, Colombian. You know, like Denice began, but, you know, and I think that that’s the most useful designation. It’s just that in the U.S. We…they need a box to put us all in.
Karla: Oh my God. We need to check that box…
Adriana: So they know. Even though we’re totally different. All of us totally different. All of us have like a spectrum of skin color, a spectrum of ideologies, a spectrum of the countries we come from, our Spanish is all different.
Karla: I recently filled out the application to get the COVID vaccine and it was it was like Hispanic, Latino, Latina. And then right under, it was like the little box, not Hispanic, Latino, Latina. And I was like, okay, well, thanks for giving me that. If I don’t pass the box, obviously the other box or not, maybe not.
Adriana: I actually appreciate that white people have to now be like white, non-Hispanic! Hahaha! Just used to be like white, normal. And now they’re like “non-Hispanic.” Okay. Calm down.
Karla: One of my, so I guess that’s going into like code switching a little bit because I guess yeah, like what label are we going to use when and where, but I also like the rise of “pocha,” is something that I really like…I like that term and people are still kind of treading lightly around it. Like what does it really mean? And then other people are really embracing it. Like Sarah Borjas. She’s like yeah…
Adriana: I mean, pochas, Spanglish. Right. You know, and it’s weird because again, I grew up on the border and so Spanglish or pochismos were very normal and a normal part of talking, like people would be like you need me to, you know, cortar y tu yarda. You’re like, yarda, what a fascinating word. Right? Cause it has Spanish jardin and in English yard. Pocho. Yarda. Right. El parking. Like those are words, you know, instead of saying el estacionamiento in Spanish or the parking lot in English…no! El parking.
Karla: I love that.
Adriana: It’s fun, it’s an entirely new language. And yet for my parents, for example, they were like, never speak like that. It classes you. You need to speak pure Spanish or pure English, do not mix the two! And yet I love the poetic possibilities and going back to the intentionality of language, you know, the like new words and new phrases we’re able to come up.
Karla: And it’s so exciting the evolution of language, it’s never stagnant, it’s never static. And then I really love something that I’ve been trying to use, maybe appropriate too, but “pero, like” you know?
Adriana: Oh yeah.
Karla: I love that, and then with my…
Adriana: “Pero like.” Sometimes I’ll say “pero, I mean” even in Spanish “pero, I mean, no me gusta.”
Karla: And in like in Mexico.. It’s like “fresa.” You know, so I’ll say it. I grew up with that. But with my non-Spanish speaking friends, I’m always like, Hola, mujer or cómo estás? Or like in the text, like, Hola and then I just go into English, and I’ll say gracias to my co-workers and they’re trying to learn Spanish. So it’s all really cool. And it all connects to and then back to the normal is easy, but then, you know, like when we’re in the United States, what language do we use?
And then our parents being like, don’t mix the languages. Only speak English at home. Like you have to assimilate, and then that’s going to make like your life easier.
Adriana: See, I was only allowed to speak Spanish at home because my parents were so scared I would lose my Spanish. Cause there were so many people who just stopped once they went to school because they were like uh, why would I speak Spanish? It’s so much easier to just live in English. And so my parents were like, this house is an English-free zone! Only Spanish! And then people are still shocked at how good my Spanish is, which I think is really fascinating. But code switching, the ability to code switch. I, you know, one of the things that I think is really fascinating is that we don’t talk about U.S. Latino culture as being a distinctive culture. That is its own culture.
Karla: Yeah.
Adriana: You know, and I think that it’s, you know, something to think about and to differentiate is, you know, how do your cultures change when you are in this common immigrant narrative? Whether or not you want it right? Because you…you are. And even if you were like old school Mexican, and you’ve been here for 200 years, you are still looked at as an immigrant in this country.
You know, even if the border changed on you. So like that, that happens in south Texas. Like there are families that have been there for 200 years in Gran Henio ??? who are undocumented and who have lived for hundreds of years on their farmsteads. But they like, the borders changed around them…they never… they give birth at home.
They don’t have the paperwork, the documentation. And so like, to even prove who you are, gets so complicated. Exclude yourself from the modern narrative of you making sure that everything’s dotted and crossed. And so, yeah, we have, I mean, this is just one poem and we just whoooo!
Karla: Unpacking. It’s so exciting.
Adriana: So let’s listen to another poem by Denice Frohman.
Denice: We’re more than then two years since hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico. And I’ve been thinking about what does democracy mean to a colony? What does democracy mean to the estimated 4,645 Puerto Ricans killed not in the hurricane, but in the aftermath of the hurricane. That there is a pattern of extraction.
If you just look at the relationship between the U.S. And Puerto Rico, which I invite all of us to do, you’d see that since the beginning of the invasion, that there is just a pattern of extraction, right. To using Puerto Rico as a military base, as a winter resort. And in order to understand what’s happening right now, we need to understand what happened.
Very similar to what happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, where there was government neglect and mass exodus of residents and a mass influx of non-native residents coming in with capital buying up cheap land… that is happening in Puerto Rico. This poem borrows its title from a New York Times article written six months after the hurricane called “Making a Crypto Utopia in Puerto Rico” that documented these investors coming from California and descending on Puerto Rico.
They live there now, and they essentially want to create their own city. And the first name they came up with is “Puertopia.” The etymology of which essentially means a door nowhere. I dedicate this poem to all the organizers on the front lines, on the island. And to all of us in the diaspora who are taking their lead.
PUERTOPIA
the coquís don’t sing anymore / they click / mosquitoes turned drones / metropolis of crypto-bro / tax-deductible greed / a door opens / an island drowns / a playground emerges / a boy / his toy // depending on the faith / the most dangerous part of a wealthy man is his index finger / what he points to / who he lands on / a civilization disposable income / pirate in cargo shorts / New World / Old Order // meanwhile we diaspora / separated by sea / peel platanos & cut them on the same angle our mothers taught us to clap / when the plane lands on either shore / now / the beaches are gated & no one knows the names of the dead / now / investors clean their beaks in the river & this is how a man becomes a flood // landlord of nothing / king of no good sky / watch paradise / misbehave / watch the night pearl / into a necklace of fists / watch this / El Yunque / a real god machine / unhinge her jaw / & swallow the flock / where are the Puerto Ricans? / cuchifrito ghost town / battery-operated citizenship / an island is not a tarmac / a disaster is not a destination—
Denice: I was going to read something else, but I think it might be more appropriate to read a poem I wrote after I visited Puerto Rico when I was a kid. We used to go every summer and then stopped. And then I feel like as I’ve really appreciated what you shared, because I feel like as I’ve gotten older, it’s one thing to go back when you’re a kid for family visits and it’s another thing when you have more autonomy and agency, as you’re older and you can sort of… what is a relationship to Puerto Rico or to your homeland mean? On your own terms right? Not try to filter through a family member, ushering you from place to place. All that to say, this is a poem I wrote about being, I think I was eight or nine, in my abuela’s backyard, watching her kill a chicken with her hands, which is very traditional and not a big deal, but I definitely felt like I was a New-ourican. I was like, I am not from here. Like we can just go to the store. Right. But I also recognize that I come from women who feel too much to feel too much and that there is a lesson in everything. These are not women that will sit you down and have heart-to-hearts with you. They teach you by showing you. And so perhaps there was a lesson in grief.
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, & 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 looked
over my shoulder & there she was,
chasing it, like an old lover
she came back to haunt yelling:
hijo de puta! sin vergüenza! ven acá!
Her rosary beads slapped against her chest,
over & over like a chant, & 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—& I saw her do it . . . & I think she knew
because the chicken clucked so hard it spit up
its own good throat & she laughed; grabbed it
by the neck & 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 & 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. & no more. But when we got to the funeral
home & saw Doña Teresa lying
in the casket—arms crossed, chin cocked up—
the whole family cried and clawed,
wanting her to come back, wanting her to shout:
Didn’t I prepare you better than this—
So this poem I think owes its genesis to Matthew Olzmann Notes Regarding Happiness and Vievee Francis as well. It was born out of sort of not wanting to… I sort of allowed my brain to take a set of detours and sort of return back to a narrative thread. And to be honest, I wrote this sitting outside of the, in and out in LA.
That’s how good the burger was. I really got inspired. If you have not been to the, In and Out, please do that immediately. They are not joking when there’s. Okay. So anyway, obviously I was like already getting pulled. I…the short story is I thought I saw somebody at the at the drive through window that was famous.
And I started to think about this word, famous and fame, and sort of the idea of, of access and who we let in and what we let in. And how much of ourselves do we show, like, if you ever want to feel really bad about your life, just scroll on social media, like just do a long scroll, right. It’s just like and, and sort of like, you’ll see a perfect version, right. A curated version of everybody’s life. Right. And so I thought to myself, what if I sort of lifted the veil, like that glossiness off of my life, right? That we all walk out of our houses with and try to just keep it together and sort of maybe lifted that veil and spoke about maybe some of the things that are underneath it.
EVERYBODY’S FAMOUS IN LA. Shout out to the In and Out.
Which reminds me that I just bought fancy sheets for the first time in my adult life, which means I’m fancy too now, which is not what my three-year old nephew would say, but absolutely how I felt when he said ti-ti you my best friend, right? And it’s like that. The first time I wore a black suit that hugged my shoulders and not my hips.
The sidewalk lit up in a constellation of days-old gum, which is so New York. So I slowed dance along the spectacle of ninth avenue and remembered that I have jumped on more than one occasion at the site of my own decadence until a vecina who knew me back when I rocked bangs and an awkward long ponytail asked what I’m up to these days? And I couldn’t tell her the truth. So I said, I write poems instead of my therapist asks, if I know what PTSD is, the best front row seats I have are the ones to my own funeral, which feels weird to say, cause I dream, I died and no one showed up. Nobody except maybe for Stan. Yes.
Stan who fixed my flat tire with a hot patch this morning and called himself king. I told you the world is full of VIP’s who make minimum wage. I hope. Fancy though. I’m not convinced. Here I am sitting outside the In and Out wanting to high-five the weather that pours out of me, but I don’t know how, the only time I won anything was a spring of ‘96.
Remember, Lucky. He bet $5 that you could beat all the sticky fingered boys in a game of 21. And when you won, you ran home with the ball cupped under your arm. Like it was a winning lottery ticket and your mother said, “You better not dribble in the house. And don’t, you dare touch the walls with your dirty fingers.” Legendary. Or the time you waited two hours outside the Reebok to take a picture with Magic Johnson. He slapped your hand. You wrapped it in plastic that night. Cause it was going to be worth bazillions one day. Your mother ripped it off because saran wrap is expensive. And food stamps don’t pay for regular people’s shit. When you’re older, she’ll remind you that her house isn’t a hotel. So you better stay a little while longer, coño.
Speaking of hotels, I’m at a fancy, no really, five-star hotel, lounging on Egyptian cotton sheets when the wireless network says there has been an error processing your request. And I remember she did not break my heart. I escaped a violence, but this is how death makes a name for itself. What does not kill me only makes me want to die a little less. I’m only trying to stay alive, here. I’m trying to change my life. Where do I sign up? I’m trying to find the courage to say, No, you can’t come in. I’ll poke holes through the night, baby. I’m a star.
So much love to City of Asylum and again, the Latinx & Proud! organizers and to my fellow poets in struggle. How many people here have a parent whose first language is not English? Can you please raise your hand? Yeah, pretty much most of the room. We don’t have an official language in this country. And yet I think one of the ways in which we make people feel other or question their citizenship is by telling them to speak English and to go back to their country. And so this poem is a poem I wrote for my mom as a way to subvert the hierarchies of languages that puts English at the top and every other language at the bottom as if languages, like people, don’t move as if we don’t bend and blend words.
So I think that Spanglish is legitimate language. I think that every generation creates its own slang, like lit wasn’t around when I was in high school. Yeah. You made a bucket, and you were like butter! You’re like…Malcolm is… I did that for Malcolm! And so many languages that we create, that cultures create, I think are legitimate and should be studied.
So this is a poem for my mom and maybe for somebody that you know and love too.
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 sancocho of Spanish and English,
pushing up and against one another,
in rapid fire
there is no telling my mama to be “quiet,”
she 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.
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 mama doesn’t say “yes”
she says, “ah ha”
and suddenly the sky in her mouth becomes Héctor Lavoe song.
her tongue can’t lay itself down flat 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 be 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 remind us that we are still
bomba, still plena
say “wepa”
Audience: WEPA!
and a stranger becomes your hermano,
say “dale”
Audience: DALE!
and a crowd becomes a family reunion.
my mama’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.
Thank you, Pittsburgh.
*Applause*
Adriana: Oh, my. We are almost out of time, Karla. So let’s go into, you know, the Remedios that are helping us get through these tough times. So what are you, what are you reading? What are you listening to? What are you watching?
Karla: Wow, I’m watching really stupid TV. But I’m reading Melissa Broder. So Sad Today. I think I might’ve mentioned that last time. And then I’m reading Roberto Bolaños, The Secret of Evil.
Adriana: Nice.
Karla: Just so it makes my heart and my brain just like fully expand and I’m reading like first thing in the morning, so I can really. I dunno, wake up and feel.
Adriana: Well, that’s lovely. That’s wonderful practice. Well, I just got Patricia Engel’s book in the mail, Infinite Country, so I’m going to be reading that and reviewing it for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. And I just got this wonderful advanced readers copies of All the Water I’ve Seen is Running by Elias Rodriques who I got to meet in Philly actually last week and, a really wonderful writer and just wonderful thinker.
And so it’s always exciting to get that. And I’m obsessing about Camilo Echeverry. I don’t know if you know him, he’s a Colombian singer. But he’s got some jams and he’s got a song called “Ropa Cara” that I’ve been listening to way too much because the chorus is “Y me gusta que me ponga ropa cara. Balenciaga, Gucci, Prada. Pero de eso no tengo nada.”
Karla: I already love it.
Adriana: It is a jam! So I’ve been enjoying the shit out of that.
Karla: And you can never like write that down in Spanish, like expensive clothes, you know, like…
Adriana: No, he’s got little lines that just, he has little lines and songs. He has another song where he says, “I’m going to turn the air to 16 so we can cuddle like it’s cold.”
And I’m like, that’s such a Colombian thing. Cause they all have little individual air conditioners in every room because the air conditioning came later and they’re ultra-modern. Sleek. Mercedes-Benz looking ass things in your, you know, like stuck on your ceiling and you put the temperature on, but it just cracks me up because I’m like, my cousin always puts it at 16, which I have no idea what it is in Fahrenheit. Probably like 60, but it’s still, you’re just like, *emotes*… so yeah, that’s what I’ve been listening to some Camilo.
Karla: Nice. Well, I want to close us out with some promo to the upcoming Latinx & Proud! event. April 27th, 2021. On City of Asylum’s, virtual page, virtual channel on Crowdcast, you can find it crowdcast.com forward slash COA.
We’ll link it in the show notes, but it’s featuring Eduardo C. Corral, Yesika Salgado. Vanessa Angélica. So, incredible lineup. The Latinx & Proud, you know, it’s a nonstop series and we’re just like coming back strong. COVID. I mean, this is still virtual and it’s not like the other times yet, but yeah, it’s going to be exciting.
Adriana: Yeah. I’m so excited. And you know, I’m a really big fan of the series. I’m not just because I’m on the board. But because I just really love watching it, you know, this is one of those things that if we didn’t create it, I would be sad it didn’t exist. So, and it’s for those, you know, and Denice said, you know, she, she would’ve found herself a lot sooner if, if something like this existed, you know, that. That if you would have been like, exposed to something like this back in the day when she was coming up, and this is, this is for those people out there that need it.
Karla: Yeah, yeah.
Adriana: Yeah. It’s absolutely wonderful. And yes. So please scope us out. City of asylum.org, or at AsterixJournal.org. Just type.org and eventually you’ll find us. I think that’s how the internet works. Right. Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, thank you so much for having us and thank you so much for listening
City of Asylum builds a just community by protecting and celebrating creative expression. Asterix is transnational, feminist literary arts journal. Co-founded by Angie Cruz and Adriana E. Ramírez, committed to social justice and translation of placing women of color at the center of the conversation.
Charla Cultural is hosted by Karla Lamb and Adriana E. Ramírez. Voice of goddess is Alexis Jabour.
Editorial support by Clarissa A. León. Brand management by Little L. Creative. Our theme song is Colombia Folk by Luis Alfonso.
And thank you as always to our sponsors, Asterix Journal and City of Asylum.
