PJ’s Story

When I was attending university in the mid 90’s, I was introduced to rock ‘n roll, weed, and Buddhism, somewhat simultaneously. A Mexican friend of mine, who loved going by his anglicized name, George, shoved David Bowie, Pink Floyd, Prince and Queen into my consciousness. He was appalled that my Ecuadorian-Canadian upbringing had left me ignorant of an entire genre, and made fun of me about it until I was shamed into buying a bunch CD’s at Tower Records. George, along with two Mexican brothers, Ricardo and Andrés, formed a band in the basement of the house they rented just outside Porter Square, Cambridge. The Fun House was the late-night hang spot, where the basement was often filled with a smokey haze, negating the need to see who was playing or sitting next to you. Hanging out in the kitchen, looking at the plethora of art work done by Ricardo, was visually orgasmic enough. Ricardo was prolific—he created oil paintings using all the kitchen cabinet doors, many of the walls on all three floors—every surface was his canvas. Buzzed and high, it was fairly neutral territory before descending into the fog.

At that time, my friend PJ played with George and the boys, quite often with different keys of harmonicas jangling in his pockets. Gradually, PJ added guitar with a harmonica rig, making his pockets jangle slightly less. I learned about Muddy Waters, Bob Dylan, and Woody Guthrie from him. Although I had my first walk with marijuana outside this group, it was with them that music meant a whole different thing from what I had previously perceived. One late night, having just made the final commuter train departing Boston, I had a complete revelation from North Station to Andover, listening to Dark Side of the Moon.

“Damn man, I finally get it!” I announced out loud to my fellow commuters. Nobody around me batted an eye.

PJ was the one that introduced me to the Dalai Lama and Buddhism. He lent me his copy of The Art of Happiness. I think I cried into the second chapter and went out to buy my own copy shortly thereafter. Living in New York decades later, I was able to see His Holiness give a lecture at Radio City and found synchronicity in the mysterious workings of this life. I kept a habit of occasionally reading Buddhist writings for the following two decades. At the time when PJ recommended The Art of Happiness, he spoke to me about it out of the blue. He was worried about me living at home with a controlling and shaming father, and a step-mom who seemed to support his abuse. I didn’t recognize all the moving parts of what was happening at that time, but PJ could see it clearly enough. He had keyed into a fellow trauma traveler from the lens as a victim of his grandfather’s sexual abuses. Perhaps at the time he gave me that book, he was looking into a kind of mirror. In our final year, he found himself in rehab, which forced him to really face what he had been through.

That one moment he took with me, changed my life.

“Get out as soon as you can,” he told me, pulling me aside one day after class. “I’m worried— we’re all worried—that your soul isn’t going to make it. We can all see what your dad does to you…” I remember feeling the walls I had erected to survive what was going on at home begin to crumble slightly. The overwhelming vulnerability of truly being seen at that moment, made me shiver out tears. He went on to say, “Read this book if you can, but mostly, meditate. It apparently takes a lifetime, but if anyone can do this, it would be you. You would do it to stop yourself from going over the edge.” He gave me his classic PJ wiggly hug and cheesy smile. “And I hear yoga helps too, but that’s more like a girl thing I think.”

People land in your life in the most mysterious ways.

©May 2019, Isabel Gonzalez

The Life of Froggy 🐸

Frightened from Halloween
Weeping, I stood in between
My parents glancing at things
My brother win at The Rings
An original Carnival game

The Haunted House behind
Bottle necks ringed blind
My brother wins first prize
A lady frog of giant size
Tearfully, I give her a name

“Froggy” journeyed with us sibs
Joining stories and other fibs
Dragged a-top a skateboard too
Froggy by me, just like glue
Tucked in bed, always tame

Drooled, stained, eyeball loose
Loving Froggy, epically profuse
Her floral dress once so bright
She help us play with all our might
Until her arm became too lame

Next it was her legs, her back
All stitches sewed a coal-black
Instead of her main color blue
Would’ve matched her eyes true
Step-mom not meant to blame

One day too old to belong in play
She sat with the others in dismay
Packing up our home again to move
She was left behind, unable to prove
Her forever love a burning flame

© May 2019, Isabel Alvear

Where Trauma Lives

Like a dead body anchored
In the bottom of my belly
Is where all the trauma of
My
Life
Sits.

It moves, bobbing silently
Pulsating as my digestion
Desperately attempts to
Flush
It
Down.

Shifting minutely
Stifling my inability
To lose the spare tire of
Anxiety
Around
My belly.

I can feel a new shifting
The dead lump lifting up
To my conscious surface
I cough
Outbursts
Of anger
And tears.

The measure of vulnerability
Coming up and out of me
Is the corpse breaking apart
Loosing
The anchor
Free.

©April 2019, Isabel Alvear

Anger: A Study

My dad was a study in anger. His mood could manipulate the people around him. That’s the power of charisma for good or evil. When at his most charming, people fell around him like dominos—his easy chatter, gregariousness, affability and generosity had him winning at almost every game. He maintained his Spanish accent that under social situations, was like standing under an umbrella of warming jasmine in the night: exotic, romantic, lingering and intriguing. All fuel for the narcissism hovering around us like the constant grayness of London.

When his mood turned dark, his façade fell. You could tell as his anger evolved on his face by the somewhat surprised countenance to his visage: forehead raised, eyebrows lifted, ears back, lips somewhat thinned underneath a very trimmed, grey-white beard. Depending on how deep his anger ran, these features deepened. His forehead added some furrowing. His jaw bunched from teeth nashing a bit of a grind. His anger was colder than a walk-in freezer, and more silent than a mid-winter blizzard in Toronto. You could feel the refrigeration as soon as you entered the room. It caused a startle in your footstep. Practically, creating a misstep. A misleading smile often ghosted my dad’s mouth, lending to a false sense of security that all was well. It was not, and the stony silence that followed a clearing of the throat was a precursor to unknown days of tip-toeing throughout the house, until he could finally bring himself to lecture whomever it was that transgressed him.

In the meantime, the pages of books and magazines were crisply flipped as he sat in front of the fire place. His scrumptious dinners were prepared and brought to the table. All things he got done was in remarkable silence. Not like a gentle, peaceful, Dalai Llama silence. No, this was the silence of some bizarre power game that I never really understood. What was the point of all the drama? The stress level at home would reach a fevered pitched as the pseudo-calm carried on relentlessly. My step-mom and I actually spoke in hushed tones for several weeks during my university days. My dad would steadfastly remain emotionally stranded on Tatooine. It became untenable at points. Eventually, I came to understand that dad was simply following the well-worn, prescribed path by millions of Latino men before him: emotional blackmail. He was an expert. He manipulated us as the man of the house, despite all of his pro-women stances; he would hold his anger, proudly creating fear, under the delusion that fear meant respect.

Maybe, if we were a gang. Or members of a drug cartel. Or the Mafia.

©April 2019, Isabel Alvear

April Guest: Lupita Eyde Tucker

This month, I am pleased to feature my cousin and guest poet Lupita-Eyde Tucker. Lupita Eyde-Tucker writes and translates poetry in English and Spanish, has studied poetry at Bread Loaf, is a Fellow at The Watering Hole, and was selected as a 2018 AWP Writer to Writer Mentee. Her poems and translations have recently appeared in Baltimore Review, SWWIM, Muse/ A Journal, Nashville Review, Small Orange, Aquifer, The Acentos Review, The Florida Review, Contrapuntos VI, and Asymptote. More poems can be found on her website: www.NotEnoughPoetry.com

ODE TO MY BICYCLE

Your two wheels
and metal frame
have penetrated my brain
my two feet no longer
can catch up
to racing thoughts
that swoop on
spinning faster
rounding corners
jumping curbs
coasting
coasting
coasting
down the slightest slopes
you make me fly
with rubber wings
pushing me harder
pumping muscles
steely minded
wind whistling
past me around me
dodging raindrops
and ever increasing
my peripheral vision
pumping euphoria
through my veins
while I dance
on your two wheels.

© Lupita Eyde-Tucker

Sopa de espinacas y papas

A Short Story

I’m at a point where I’m getting closer to understanding why it’s hard to replicate my abuelita’s spinach and potato soup. I’ve tried five different potatoes. Three different sizes. I’ve played with mostly potato and some yucca. I’ve tried sautéing the spinach in garlic first; adding it last, right before serving. That’s been the closest. Also, the onion counts. Yellow over white or red. The funny thing about memories, like when I was standing on my tip-toes in mi abuela’s kitchen, is that it’s never quite the same each time you next remember it. Details come back. Like when she pulled over the step stool, then a chair, to better accommodate my smallness. How she smelled. The ever-present scent of lavender. Heavy cast iron pans. Humming. Music. The sound of birds in the garden.

It took me into my forties to realize that it won’t ever be the same, and that’s on purpose.

Time works our memories in this way so that we have to do things our own way, and simply pay homage to what was at one time. Her kitchen never will be my kitchen. The smells aren’t even close. Herbs of all kinds hanging upside down drying. Potions in assorted glass bottles and jars with spidery writing. She was always drawing me pictures, in pen no less, with her thin, slightly shaken lines. Where she lived in Guayaquil, she had access to the kinds of fruits and vegetables that I could never find in the States—similar, yes—but not the same. I live in an apartment on the third floor in Harlem where I’m probably the only Ecuadorian within ten blocks. Abuela had a beautiful garden in the back, with pockets of delicacies on the sides and front. Plus, the water is way different. The air. The humidity. On the equator, daily torrential downpours muddying the streets, blinding drivers and impossible to walk in, is normal. Over in a moment, the sun comes out blazing hot again, drying the streets within the hour. Abuela would look at me with one of her Mona Lisa smiles, fragile skin tanned, her hands showing arthritis. The strength in those hands, like death grips followed by feather-like touches.

It’s the balance of her hands that yields the perfect sopa de espinacas y papas.

It’s all of her spirit too, and the memories of those who taught her, and those who taught them. In some ways, my simple sopa becomes a history lesson on the memories of taste. My sopa will never taste exactly like mi abuela’s because now it includes her as part of my memories. The alchemy has changed because it’s her and me.

© April 2019, Isabel Alvear

Reliable Babysitters

Our Trinidadian babysitter conveniently lived just a few floors below us. A great-grandma, she was our guardian until she was out sick one day. It turned out she would be out sick forever.  On the elevator my parents had met an Argentinian lady, newly installed in what the adults dubbed a “luxurious unit” in the sprawl of our government housing. Awaiting full-time work, she cleaned apartments and made time for the last-minute likes of us.

My brother and I hadn’t yet eaten breakfast when we appeared in her hallway that early morning. My parents filled her tiny kitchen as she poured Nescafé and dumped white sugar like a champ into brown ceramic mugs that defined the 1980’s. Two sips into these niceties and my dad told my mom we didn’t have time, he had to drop her off. My mom practically scalded her tongue and throat tossing a few more gulps of precious elixir down. Offering a quick “Cuidase, mi niños,” she bent over giving us each a pucker, whilst rummaging through my brother’s hair. I drifted in and out, buckling on rubbery five-year-old legs. My mom shuffled me over to the living room, telling me to lay down on the sofa.

“Por favor, solamente Cream of Wheat o Farina—nada mas,” instructed dad as my brother and I exchanged glances, wilting. Two boring dad-approved kinds of cereals. No strawberry Nesquik like when our mom makes us breakfast. For a while, I rubbed at the sleep fogging my brown eyes.

A slight tickle along the back of my hand rousted me gently. My brother. I tried to shake him off, each time more violently, eyes blissfully closed. Saliva stuck to my cheek as I sighed, wriggling to reclaim my comfort. The tickling insisted. My eyes flew open, retaliation burning.

A cockroach. No one around. One thin, crooked leg at a time, he sauntered along my forearm, antennae searching. Two thousand lenses comprising his eyes, watched multiple versions of my face open in baby-faced shock; stared as my hysterical toddler-tears burst forth; noted my brother and babysitter, as they ran into the room shouting.

© March 2019, by Isabel Alvear

 

On Notice

 

I guess I just have to do
Something
Hey, HEY
To get noticed
Up/down
Spinning/around
Hey now. Hey there
Don’t be feeling
Your feelings…
Your quota is filled
Hey now. Hey, see me yet?
Gears gathering
Fears furthering
Dreams dithering
No más para usted, bebé
For two thousand, seventeen
This year no hay más espacio
No seeing and no feeling
Not to rent, borrow or steal
Buena suerte, mi gentes
Jump away all day
Up/Down/Around

Death in Harlem: A Senegalese Muslim family mourns

It’s a very New York experience to live in religious and ethnic diversity. If you choose to, you can truly live in the middle of a worldwide cultural mecca. Such is the slice of Harlem in which I live. My neighbours are a hodge-podge of long-term residents of Harlem’s African American community, white and black Millenials, first generation Hispanic Americans, Asians, Jews and African Muslims.

It’s very cool.

Sometimes, very challenging.

I’ve watched the children of my downstairs neighbours grow over the years and only recently has there been a hint that they’re not as afraid of my dogs as they used to be. It’s taken five years of back and forth calming children and dogs (often the parents too), patiently training that not all dogs are created evil. Admittedly, I did lose my patience once, sometime into year four, where I practically shouted down the matriarch to calm the hell down upon seeing my dogs–if she could simply learn to ignore them and teach her family the same, the dogs will blow right by them so help me–calm down, calm down.

Embracing ones fears takes time and in this case, I’m certain it’ll take yet more years. I’ve also had to learn in the interim that there’s a culture of fear around dogs for many African Muslim’s. It came as a surprise when a small, yet significant change was made after my mini meltdown. Instead of never speaking to me and continued panicky behaviour at my dogs’ appearances, there’s a rather neighbourly passive-aggressive avoidance whenever the dogs are out.

I’ll take it.

Recently, man and beast reunited again over a very unusual circumstance surrounding these same neighbours. Coming home one night, I came upon their apartment crowded to the hilt with men standing in the doorway facing outward, backlit by an unusual gloomy light. The women were in the courtyard standing in a bit of a clump, murmuring softly. My first thought was one of worry that my dogs would have a meltdown over the crowds of people everywhere. As I rounded up the troops for their nightly saunter, I began playing back in my mind the details of what I’d witnessed.

The women stood out because they were colourfully dressed, yet shrouded in black. I saw peeping under black layers no western wear at all, but traditional Muslim garb as I’d seen worn only during special occasions, down to the footwear. The details of the men came to mind because so many were crowded at the door, blocking the entrance by sheer number, facing outward and shoeless. The dark and solemn quietude of my neighbour’s apartment was what brought everything together for me.

Someone must have died.

Considering the hubbub, my dogs were decidedly on point and well behaved. Both passing the crowds on the way out and on the way in, they seem to sense something was off and out of place. Their usual rambunctiousness surprisingly subdued.

Three days of an endless stream of visitors came and went. I summoned the courage to ask one visitor if someone had died, to which he confirmed that it was indeed the case. My biggest concern was that it was one of the four children or one of the parents. Due to language barriers I never found out who had died but I saw that the family core was still intact over a week’s time.

I find it fascinating the influence different groups of humans can have on each when living so closely together, particularly as New Yorkers. Nods of heads, eye contact or shared hellos may be all the neighbourly exchange that occurs, sometimes over decades. There’s definitely been room for more too–usually from the long-term residents–some of whom are second and third generation Harlemites. Nonetheless, with all the love/hate that many transplants like myself feel, this neighbourly exchange is an amazing reason to get up in the morning, say hello, dogs in tow.