The Blogs

Escrito 07-05-14 Marilu y Lulu se creain mejor que nadie pero yo pensaba que quizas era al reves. Se daban lija todo el tiempo. Marilu por su pelo negro, larguisimo y rizado. Una vez me dijo que ella habia sido modelo para los anuncios del champu Breck. Segun Marilu ella tenia el pelo precioso, medio rubio y ondeado. Todas queriamos tener esas suaves ondas rubias de los anuncios de Breck.

Written 06-07-14 The two brothers had the same childhood but you wouldn't know it, is what Sandra who was married to the young one, Pablo, always thought, when the old one, Pedro,got home drunk from the bar. The brothers' Abuela said as much when Sandra stopped to see her at the diner, when they stood outside so Abuela could smoke her cigarette on her break.
Sandra went to see her because she wanted to think with her about Pedro's drinking, mainly because the drinking was getting her Pablo down.

An intimate scene of family life...Jorgito glued his face to the plastic tank where the ants were crawling. He knew the round bellie ant was the queen He felt out of the corner of his eye, the gaze of his mother, drawing at her art table. She was like the queen. If god or an angel or his abuela who was supposedly in heaven was looking, maybe to them their whole house was like the anthill. What would they think? Could they tell what a good anthill queen Mami was on the days like today when she was happy?

Written 06-07-14 On top of the file folder his freak mother left on the table, after he poured the contents on the floor (a lot of bills that later on he'd hear them arguing over not payint), he wrote with the black sharpie his brother used to tag Last everywhere he coudl, and that he stole,
he wrote in huge letters:
You wanted to abort me.
He turned the folder over and on the back he wrote:
You wanted me to die.
He opened the folder and he wrote:
You wanted to kill me. You wanted me to die.

Written 06-06-14

I am from
the gleam in my father's eyes
my mother's bowed head

I am from his sermons
her torn vagina

I am from his hope
her rage

I am from
the Tainas
who drowned their babies
The Tainos who hanged themselves
from trees

I am from the Tainos
who fought back
the cimarrones
who ran into the mountains

I am from Marti
with the ball chained to his ankle
Marti lighting uprisings
with his words
Marti riding wounded on his horse

Written 06-07-14. Nothing bad happened to him yet he thought and his face had no lines, no signs. Or, he thougt at other times the bad things that had happened were so bad they had stopped him from feeling way before the feelings touched his face. Most of the time he was very quiet. Looking at himself in the mirror he couldn't tell if he was bored, or numb, or what.
He loved to fish. He didn't remember it but before his mother left, she used to read him a Chinese version of Cinderella with a magic fish. He didn't remember the story but he loved to fish.

Written 06-06-2014. Visualize a door, who what where...do you see...enter it... Javi and I are in the back room of the house on the Callejon Amargura in Sancti, Spiritus. We stand at the back window of our room. It is a full length window. We grip the metal baars and stick our faces almost through them, watching the pouring rain. We can barely see the Escambray mountains in the distance, where I imagine Joseph with his coat of many colors lives.

Written 06-06-14
My father was born in Guanajay, in Pinar del Rio Province, East of Havana, the part of the island that would be the heel if Cuba was actually a woman's shoe.
I used to worry that he came from a place that means turkey, or is similar to the word for turkey, guanajo, in the same way I worried that my name Maritza was already a diminutive, and what would I be called when I grew up?
I worried a lot about things that I thought might mark me as odd, or reveal me as odd.

What do yu do when all of life is making do?
Today Lucas was very happy because he got the walls bilt. "I'm someone who can make fire from nothing." He was euphoric. He's been feeling his way to life out of the ground. What's been missing in his life is room, and welcome.
If he wasn't fierce, a fighter, he'd be dead.
I called him to ask him, "I saw a guy today, driving. What is a guy your age doing sucking a blue pacifier while driving a car he almost hits me with when he left turns?"
Lucas laughed. "It's something people used to do back in the day."