WEBVTT

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Yeah.

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And you can see maybe and you
can hear in some of the poems,

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there is-- even though
I've been saying,

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yes, this is a book of poems
that is taking on mortality

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and thinking about it.

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But it's not morbid.

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It is funny and light,
but also makes room

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for that moment when
you really think

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through some wonderful
ghosts who come to visit you.

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And you would think, as
the arc starts to close,

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that the poems will
get much darker.

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But they don't.

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They do come into the
sweetness of memory

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and also sometimes a
bit of apology even,

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of thinking about
ghosts you haven't

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thought about for a long time.

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So when we get to
a moment to say,

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who am I remembering,
who have I forgotten,

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what do I have to atone
for, we can come up

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with some interesting figures.

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Yeah.

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Can we hear "Who to Ask?"

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"Who to Ask?"

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Yeah.

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When you grow up
in a Latin culture,

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many times we don't
do nuclear families.

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[CHUCKLES] It's extended
families, huge families.

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And there's a richness to that.

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There's more than one
mother in your clan.

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If you have trouble
with your mother,

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there's this tía, or that
tía, or an abuela, or an older

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cousin.

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You have options.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Which we lost when we
came to this country.

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We became nuclear and explosive!

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Well, we didn't
have that diffusing.

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But the hard part
of that is that when

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they start-- when the
old people start to die,

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you don't just lose
one auntie or one--

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you lose a whole
phalanx of people.

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They disappear, all
of these people that

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were figures in your childhood.

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And that you thought--

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you ignored them,
mostly, outright.

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They were just there
to tell you a story,

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or help you tie a
ribbon, or get you out

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of trouble with your
mother, or whatever it was.

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And you think,
oh, who were they?

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And they're not there.

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The elders aren't
there to tell you,

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especially when you look
through an album, so who is?

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Who is that?

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Who is that, right?

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So I was thinking of that in
writing this poem, "Who to Ask?"

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So you're going to hear about
a host of people that "Who

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to Ask?"

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Not Lala with her movie
star smile flashing

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as we came up her driveway

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So pleased to see us

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Lala, who taught us
how to read in Spanish

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Though English was her
in-laws' lingua franca

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Your souls are almas
and your wings are alas

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Lala, who could pick her
way through the thicket

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of our genealogy

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Knew the provenance
of each sprig

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But never told how she came by
her pale skin from a dark seed

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Lala, who will be waiting
on death's shore so pleased

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to see us

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Not her to tell us who the
stranger in the photo is

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Not tía Claudina unsmiling,
elegant, her hair done up

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like frosting on a fancy cake

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Whose nasal voice we
imitated, pinching

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our noses, thoughtless children

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Who always paused
before responding

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As if our voices were
the light of stars

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that took their
time to reach her

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Who read the papers daily,
every word supplies at hand

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A pair of scissors,
magnifying glass,

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tape for piecing together
multiple page columns

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Whose envelopes
stuffed with clippings

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kept us exiles in the loop
of the latest coup or scandal

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The dates carefully
penned in the margins

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Not her who later
lost her memory

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A library erased inside
her silver edifice of hair

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Not her to tell us who the
stranger in the photo is

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Or tía Yanique whose father came
from France, from Paris, France

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A fine distinction
we didn't understand

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Until in boarding
school, needing a boost

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to our credentials

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We bragged about our tante,
whose père had come from Paris

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But never asked
her why he'd left

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his home, estranged
from his family

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Not her, to ask, who is the
stranger in the photograph?

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Not Chucha, heavens, no!

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Who never gave straight answers

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Never told where she came from

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Though, the story was,
she walked on foot

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from the border to the capital

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A Haitian girl fleeing
the cane or killing fields

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Knocked on the door of
my great aunt's house,

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asking for harbor for the
night and stayed a lifetime

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Chucha, dark as the coffee
she drank and the lisping sips

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we mimicked

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A mint tucked in her cheek

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Who read our fortunes
from the stains

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Always the same, money, love,
a letter, a trip to Nueva York

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Chucha, who never married,
bore an only son we never saw

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But never thought to
ask her where he was?

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So perhaps he is the
stranger in the photograph?

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Too late to ask Balbina,
who almost lived forever

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Her birth date lost
in on story time

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before the days were numbered

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Who remembered earthquakes,
hurricanes of 80-90 years ago

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The great floods
sweeping away her family

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Which could be why she always
dressed in purple, down

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to her underwear

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Her prepaid coffin
lined in purple satin,

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served as bed and dresser

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Who talked with a stutter,
which we also imitated,

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mindless children

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Who never asked her why she
dressed in the color of bruises

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Why she slept in her coffin

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Shameless children,
who drew a naked lady

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on the wall of our
grandparents' house

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with charcoal from
Balbina's laundry fires

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And signed her name, thinking
we'd get away with it

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And would have, had it not been
common knowledge that Balbina

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couldn't write

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But scrawled an X on the
dotted lines of documents

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Not her to name the
stranger in the photograph

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Our punishment, to
scrub the stucco back

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to its pristine whiteness

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Like punishment, compared
to this estrangement

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At every turn, in
albums, conversations,

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among unlabeled clippings
tía Claudina never got to

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We find them, strangers
who lived among us,

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who now come back to haunt us

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Strangers we never knew
and those we thought we did

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And now too late to
ask them who they were

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To learn their
stories, rightful names

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For shame, for shame.

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[COUGHS]

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[APPLAUSE]

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[CLEARS THROAT]

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It's really, again, if
you can hear, especially

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in that last poem,
it just starts--

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the stories unfurl.

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