Walking in the Motherland
- Walking in the Motherland
Puerto Rico, the earth’s cut toenail in the sink, wheremy mom’s drunk dad ignored the blade that cut his gut because his skinwas lined with the courage to protect Armando.
He was wasted! I can tell you that Cerro Gordomeans Fat Hill, but you won’t know it’s a beach so clearit looks like a cup of holy water hitched to the wall—
so clear like a new glass door to the porch that shovesyour plate into your stomach as your nose breaks against it. People loveto talk about streets, but asphalt’s always a cemetery
of skinned tires, so I’m looking to the markets—Condom World!—where I buy gloves and a Snickers and save enoughmoney to buy a fried steak with an egg cracked over it
and enough rice to fill the open container of my head—all down the avenue from my uncle’s neighborhood. This is weirdfor me because I don’t enjoy writing about my culture,
though I love Puerto Rico, which nearly eliminatedvegetables, though I love spinach, meaning that I’m not Puerto Rico,but I’m from there. It’s peculiar to be peculiar
where you should be familiar—domestic fish droppedin the ocean, plastic spoons shuffled in the utensil drawer, me backin Bayamón, watching my alternate history as I remind [End Page 44]
myself that I’m on vacation, passing homeless menwho will make more money if they only have one arm, skirting the skinof houses made from shells, wondering if
we all really do carry knives into stores, into homeswe can’t afford, into the chests of people we don’t even know,as I lick the sweat off this ice cream I bought at the corner. [End Page 45]
Daniel Ruiz was born in Bayamón, Puerto Rico, and now lives in New York. He is the recent recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to Chile, and his poems can or will be found in The Journal, the minnesota review, New Delta Review, and elsewhere.
