My mother and I met them when they were five, at the intersection of John F. Kennedy / and Abraham Lincoln. / Every time a car stopped at the red light, they washed the front / window for a few pesos. / Over the years, in broken Spanish, they gave us a small piece of / their past—they had crossed the border for work, came from the Artibonite Valley, lived / in a tin house, never had shoes. 

In half light, I come upon the body: slender / Mud brown, shorn scalp, quieted and steady; lifted / From a formalin bath and laid in the cool room / 

My flesh song, / a growing plot of womb. / A woman’s life mere and / common if she is blessed. / Chickens gossiping in the courtyard. / Hungry children taught / the languages of millet and yam. / 

I long for your voice all over my skin / pirouetting around you. / Tip toes around the fold of your name, /

I’m not stating explicitly that I am Latino, / because I am not exactly Latino. Instead I’ll say / meeting my father awoke a nation inside me / and my tongue began forming his Spanish. I’ll say / making patacones is a spiritual experience— / a prayer. And the browning sizzling disks— / an answer.