Canticle of Uncle Carlos
Who sat with a quart bottle of cheap beer
under the mango tree
after laying cinder blocks in the Miami heat
all day and proclaimed
to his cousin Paco I feel like a king.
This poem is for him
who always felt that way
even when he was dying
of throat cancer
and could barely speak
through the tumor
that was choking him
still he told dirty jokes
to fellow patients
in the common room
and drank a beer
I sneaked in past the nurses’ station.
My father called me
with the news
almost crying his brother
had died and now the tree
was dying too a mere
coincidence no doubt no doubt
we die miserably and alone
in a nursing home
with the radio playing
a bolero of lost love the nurses like
Uncle Carlos never took things
seriously not money or power
not prestige or good looks
or bad boleros
viva la muerte he said.
All he ever needed was a drink
after a hard work day
the sun shining through
the branches and his cousin Paco
now dead as well
who marveled at the king
on his throne under the mango tree.
* * * * *
American Food
for John Skoyles
Once when I lived in the Bronx I saw
a yellow butterfly float over the train tracks
by the Hudson’s spiky shore
I went after it jumping carefully over
the third rail all the way
to the Harlem River where the butterfly
disappeared into Manhattan.
.
It took me an hour to get home
you want a tunifish sandwich
the old lady who lived down the hall asked
and I said yes canned tuna I loved
and had plenty over the years
as well as Chef Boyardee ravioli
now I am without tunifish or Boyardee
or bologna on white bread with mayo
another delicacy of my youth.
I’m dying I told that sweet lady in a dream
what else is new she said and offered
a chopped liver sandwich I bit into
and gagged I’d never tasted
the paste of inner organs.
Under the moon I lugged myself to the street
and walked past Spuyten Duyvil and the Bronx
across the river to New Jersey where I heard
a wailing tender voice spitting out grape
after grape of purple angst.
American food makes sense
if sense is what you long for
and you’re hungry from your travel
through the Devil’s Spite to the purple grapes
the chopped liver and the butterfly.