REMEMBERING
“The darkness has decided to give back”
–Cate Dolan
It is not in the nature of memory to be sturdy,
otherwise remembering would be an inmate
in the calyx of old pains,
another day in Prometheus’ life,
repetition of the moment of the wound,
when, otherwise, it could blossom, be a new legend,
letting your Iliad surrender to your Odyssey,
and your Odyssey end when you arrive home,
otherwise, a memory is clay turning to stone,
a boulder on your back or a pebble in your shoe,
an unforgiving monument.
FINO, POR FAVOR
I was a young parishioner of the almacén
where my mother procured groceries
she could pay on the last day of long months.
Don Raúl and his wife ran it although
she would disappear when he held court,
given the man was more high priest
than the owner of a neighbourhood deli.
When my mother would ask him
for prosciutto sliced thin, he’d look at her
from the dark grotto below his restless eyebrows,
and proceed, as slowly as he could,
to carry the pig’s leg to the slicer.
He would turn the machine’s knob,
as carefully as a thief cracking a vault,
cut a single slice,
hold it between his fingers,
gently blow on it, watch it shiver
like a leaf touched by a breeze,
and ask,
Is this thin enough, Ma’am?
Glint Literary Journal 