Thank you.
And I'm going to close with this poem
because it's one of my longer poems, and I rarely read it.
But it's really, I think, appropriate,
growing up, moving from Puerto Rico to the Bronx.
And I'll talk more about her probably later,
but my grandmother who's still alive to this day, she's 91,
was the one who really has always pushed
education and literature.
She was the reader in the family.
And even to this day, for Mother's Day
last year, I bought her the Michelle Obama biography
in Spanish because that's what I would do for her.
I would buy her all these biographies in Spanish.
So moving out here, being educated in the Catholic school
system, one of the things my grandmother would say
is, no pierdes tu idioma.
Don't lose your language.
And so it was interesting growing up hearing that always
and almost as if language is something
that you can lose like your glasses or your keys almost,
like it was this tangible thing that you're like, oh,
where's my language?
Oh, aquí está, right?
And it was just really fascinating to me.
So I took this idea and I ran with it.
And so this is the narrative poem that came from that.
It's called "A Journey for the Mute."
"Salvador woke up one morning in silence.
His lips opened but only air resonated.
His hand reached into his mouth and searched for his voice box.
His voice box was alone, feeling the loss of its companion
language.
Language left Salvador.
Questions drove him drunk with no answers for sobriety.
Salvador tried living without language.
He communicated with noises, wrote sonnets for the lonely,
had imaginary conversations with imaginary people.
In his new travels, he searched and searched lifted boulders,
dug through graveyards, hoping to find it sitting,
waiting to be found.
To Salvador, this hide and go seek game had no end.
His life remained still and gray as he continued on his journey.
Passers by like Don Loco Santana would
ask, when was the last time Salvador
remembered seeing his language?
Salvador's mind rewound to the last night
his mother read him a bedtime story.
She would translate Little Red Riding Hood.
And her version, the hood was rojo, the wolf was a lobo,
and the grandmother sounded a lot
like Abuelita Consuela who died when Salvador was 12.
Just before his body lost the struggle against sleep,
he would feel his mother's mouth kissing his cheek as she
asked God to bless her mijo.
Salvador shrugged off Santana's question along with his memory.
He cursed his God for truths and Santana
for living up to his name, Loco.
So he walked reclaiming his mission.
He drew pitiful signs asking anyone
if they had seen his language.
His reward, a lifetime of thank you letters.
He received a few replies.
One of them from Reverend Clemente.
He told Salvador the last time he
saw his language was at Luzdivina's funeral.
Salvador delivered his mother's eulogy, bestowing
all of her fragrances, graces, and blessings
on the congregation.
She was all he had in this fabulous world.
From her, he learned to cook his own rice and beans,
ironed the crispy shirts, and listened selectively.
She was wise.
She knew why chickens didn't fly.
And no other mother on the block could
match the softness of her hair.
She was all for him.
Salvador cried in English that day
as Spanish tears drizzled his mother's casket.
He thanked everyone for coming, including
the janitor who collected the loose petals from the floor.
Reverend Clemente reminded Salvador
of the weekly Spanish mass, always on Sundays at 5:00 PM.
Guido's tambourines and guitars were
welcome for those I need to be saved again moments.
Salvador buried Reverend Clemente's letter
in the freshest soil on the sunny side of the Earth
with hopes that it would grow his mother back to life.
Another letter came from his best friend, Cristobal.
He last saw Salvador's language running out
of harm's way the day they were both stopped by the police
at the mall who didn't believe that they
could afford the brand name clothing they were wearing.
The policeman said, even though one of their relatives
made the clothing for $0.05 an hour,
that gave them no right to wear such things.
When he asked for names, Salvador
became Sal and Torres became Towers.
Cristobal could not believe the perfection of Salvador's Anglo
accent.
They were led off with a stern warning
as Cristobal whistled Officer Krupke all the way home.
Cristobal closed his letter asking
after Salvador's whereabouts.
They have not seen each other since that day.
Salvador felt he felt hopeless as he
looked at the piles of letters.
One name stood out from the pile.
It came from Miss Paloma, his kindergarten teacher.
She was gorgeous and the first woman he ever
loved aside from his mother.
Miss Paloma was married, a hyphen after her name.
She recalled the first time she saw Salvador's language.
He entered her classroom with the note
stapled to his brown polyester vest,
listing all of his allergies to paste, crayons,
toxic watercolors, finger paint, and some girls.
She introduced herself with silence as his response.
She tried it again, but this time,
with her island grown Spanish.
Salvador smiled with four missing teeth and a weak hola.
That first day, Miss Paloma was the student.
She learned that he was five, just arrived in the US
with his mother from a tiny island
off Puerto Rico called Vieques.
There were too many explosions to hear the coquis at night.
Salvador had forgotten about that first day,
the vest, the list written in his mother's
perfect handwriting.
His eyes filled with images, playing street football
with Cristobal, Sunday masses with tambourines,
and everyone asking weekly penance for weekly sins,
and his abuelita Consuela's skin so
wrinkled he swore he could peel it off.
He fell to his knees asking for forgiveness and salvation.
Tears soaked his face in the land beneath him.
He prayed for the reincarnation of his language.
He begged for its return.
Promised never to allow silence in exchange
for acceptance or denial.
He swore to his god and his mother's god."
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Luivette.
I was so taken away by that.
It's almost like a children's story,
but it also is relatable to adults.
I love that.
Thank you so much.