WEBVTT

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I don't know if anyone
has ever said this to you,

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but the other day,
somebody said it to me.

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It's a good thing
your father is dead,

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because if he weren't,
this would kill him.

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You've heard that.

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Well, my cousin Gisella said
that to me about my father.

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And she said it in reference to
the hurricane in Puerto Rico,

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and specifically the destruction
of his birthplace of Utuado.

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And there was an article in
the Chicago Tribune all about

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Utuado's-- it was the first time
I've ever read anything about

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that mountain town in Puerto
Rico in a newspaper in this

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country.

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And she's right, I'm glad
he's not here to see it,

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to read the
description that I read

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in that article about this
community of people trapped

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where a bridge had been crushed
and washed away on one side.

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And there was a huge
lake on the other,

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and people could
hear them screaming

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but couldn't reach them.

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And so that
description haunts me

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as my father
continues to haunt me.

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Francisco Luis's
father, Frank Espada,

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was born in Utuado,
Puerto Rico in 1930.

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He came to this country in 1939.

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He died in Pacifica,
California in 2014.

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He was a community organizer.

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He was a civil rights leader.

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Some would say he was the leader
of the Puerto Rican community

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in New York in the 1960s.

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He was also a
documentary photographer

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who created something called
the Puerto Rican Diaspora

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Documentary Project.

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When he died, I went
through a ceremony

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that will be familiar to anyone
here who's ever lost a parent.

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It's a ceremony of going
through the stuff, right,

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it's going through the junk.

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And you're sifting
through it, and you're

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thinking the unthinkable.

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I'm going to throw this out.

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And then you come
across the treasure.

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And it's a treasure only to
you, but a treasure nonetheless.

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In my case, there were
two yellow Kodak boxes

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marked Puerto Rico Noche
Buena Diciembre 1968,

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Super 8 home movies.

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We used to make
those in the '60s.

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We thought we were
very sophisticated.

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And there I saw it, film of
my father at the age of 38,

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me at the age of
11, my first visit

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to the island of Puerto Rico.

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I'm originally from
Brooklyn, New York.

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And I began to watch, and
this poem came out of it.

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There's one Puerto
Rican-ism here

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that I want to flag
for you before I read.

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In Puerto Rican Spanish,
the word bendito

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literally means blessed one,
can mean 10 different things

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depending on what
you do with it.

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So this is a poem
called "Haunt Me,"

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and it's for my
father, Frank Espada.

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"I am the archaeologist.

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I sift the shards of you,
cufflinks, passport photos,

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a button from the
March on Washington

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with a black hand shaking a
white hand, letters in Spanish,

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your birth certificate from
a town high in the mountains.

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I cup your silence,
and the silence

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melts like ice in a cup.

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I search for you in
two yellow Kodak boxes

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marked Puerto Rico, Noche
Buena, Diciembre 1968.

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In the 8-milimeter
silence the Espadas

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gather, elders born before
the Spanish-American war,

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my grandfather on crutches
after fracturing his fossil hip,

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his blind brother on a cane.

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You greet the elders,
and they call you Tato,

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the name they call you there.

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Uncles and cousins sing
in a chorus of tongues

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without sound, vibration
of guitar strings

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stilled by an unseen hand,
maracas shaking empty of seeds.

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The camera wobbles
from the singers

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to the television
and the astronauts

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sending pictures of
the moon back to Earth.

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Down by the river, women still
pound laundry on the rocks.

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I am 11 again, a boy from
the faraway city of ice

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that felled my grandfather,
startled after the blind man

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with the cane stroked my face
with his hand dry as straw

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crying out, Bendito.

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At the table, I hear
only the silence

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that rises like the
river in my big ears.

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You sit next to me
clowning for the camera,

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tugging the lapels
on your jacket,

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slicking back your
black hair, brown skin

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darker from days in the sun.

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You slide your arm around my
shoulder, your good right arm,

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your pitching arm, and
my moon face radiates,

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and the mountain song
of my uncles and cousins

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plays in my head.

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Watching you now,
my face stings as it

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stung when my blind great-uncle
brushed my cheekbones,

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searching for his own face.

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When you died, Tato, I took
a razor to the movie looping

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in my head, cutting
the scenes where

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you curled an arm
around my shoulder,

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all the times you would
squeeze the silence out of me

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so I could hear the
cries and songs again.

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When you died, I heard only
the silences between us,

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the shouts belling the air
before the phone went dead,

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all the words melting
like ice in a cup.

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That way, I could set my jaw
and take my mother's hand

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at the mortuary, greet
the elders in my suit

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and tie at the memorial,
say all the right words.

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Yet my face stings at last.

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I rewind and watch your arm
drape across my shoulder

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over and over.

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A year ago, you pressed a
Kodak slide of my grandfather

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into my hand and said,
next time, stay longer.

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Now in the silence
that is never silent,

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I push the chair away from
the table and say to you,

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sit down, tell me
everything, haunt me."

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