by Soledad Caballero
Los pollitos dicen, and Gracias a la vida.
It’s a mixed soundtrack, our 1980s.
The first, lullaby for tenderness,
the other for days when wounds were
big, and mercy not worth wondering about.
One for sharing with kids you babysat,
five bucks an hour, sometimes lunch
and afternoon snacks, the other
for things made of mystery, letters
written on onion skin paper, pictures
folded in your nightstand drawer,
creased with sweat and rubbing,
wet still with whatever burst out
from eyeballs after another month
passed, after more time ticked in
that two-bedroom apartment with
cockroaches, hard floors, an oven
you crammed a hormone-radiant
turkey into our first Thanksgiving.
Gracias a la vida was for other days,
for other years when gratitude wasn’t
locked up in the snow. In Oklahoma
we knew what chickens and turkeys said,
lived behind the agrifarm, monster birds,
thick bulging breast meat, too heavy
to walk. When winter inside got too
much, you stuffed us in hand-me down
coats, boots, gloves, yelled, let’s go see
the turkeys! Depending on weekday
schedules, three of us, five of us, eight
of us ran around wild, hide and seek
between cages, surrounded by bird shit stench.
Que dicen los pollitos. I don’t know how
much Mercedes you found those first years,
how much of her sky and blue, how much
of her lover’s eyes. When my father left
you decades later, there was no bird talk.
You sang y ahora que, que dice la vida?
Taught grandkids a new song, los pollitos
dicen gracias a la vida.
BIO