A POEM A DAY

I'm just happy to be here.

Tag: family

April 30, 2025

20/30 – Cascarones and Pinatas

I crack the cascarones with my hands to show you
how to hold all the colors before we turn to mama
and cover her in confetti

I grab another one and hide it in the soil of one of
grandma’s plants, and you find it and give it to me.
I open the cascarones in front of you so you again
so you can see how a ritual begins

Cascarones in your long hair
Confetti falls with every step you take
All day you’ve run around in your bare feet
The oak tree in front of grandma’s house
looks like its hugging you
so we take a picture between the branches
together as a family
standing on the soil
with confetti falling
over the roots of who we are

Your cousins let you hit the piñata first
before all the other big kids
You take the stick and tap the piñata
gentle as the confetti caught in your hair
We all shout and cheer, and you watch in awe
as candy falls to the ground
and this is how a ritual begins
My Mexican boy learning the joy of being here on this Earth.

When we go to take our family photos,
your mama and I watch you smile so hard,
we can see all your teeth.


Leave a comment
April 8, 2025

6/30: Springtime on a Sunday in Houston

Your mama tells me she used to feed the ducks
at Hermann Park with her mama, your grandma.
The oak tree where I kissed my-soon-to-be-wife
during our engagement photoshoot is still standing,
branches bending below, almost touching the earth.
Everyone is outside. Kisses exchanged at crosswalks
and sidewalks. I feel joy in every stop you take. The train
passes by and we wave. Your voice is music to the birds.
You want to walk everywhere. Even when your steps
turn into a stumble, you stand tall. Me and the sky,
both in awe. We forgot your sweater today, and when
the sun stands behind the shadow, your mother would
hold you close to keep you warm. I put my hoodie on your legs.
Halle and Luis join the adventure, our neighbors-turned-friends
take pictures of us as a family on a Spring Sunday in Houston,
a memory to memorialize this time. Time passes by and Mama and I
hold you, sometimes together, sometimes apart. My favorite part
of the day is when you and mama rode the carousel. I stand in the audience,
and watch your face spin with joy each time you pass us by.
Mama laughs and holds you close, and the carousel feels like time itself,
with each passing second telling me what the last second meant,
and what the next second could mean. Next time, we’ll feed the ducks together,
with mama holding the bread, like she used to do, all of us together.

Leave a comment
April 8, 2021

6/30: ONLY MY FEAR IS FLUENT

I wish speaking Spanish was like making tortillas
Something I could do after watching
my grandmas hands from afar
before trying to form the dough in my own

Was it ever supposed to be easy?


How much time
do I give
a language to rise within?

After years of studying,
I tried leaving my voice
in the bowl on the kitchen counter
of my childhood.

Nothing changed.

How can one language
carry the sounds of
belonging
and
envy?

I’ve asked every question
asked of me
By Spanish-speaking folks
who demand to know
Why hasn’t Spanish
rose within me
like the ancestral
promise of my name?

I have the answers:

I spent my whole life
biting the guilt on my tongue
And now,
only my fear is fluent.

Leave a comment
April 5, 2021

4/30: I NEVER WANT TO SAY GOODBYE

Easter Sunday
in Red Oak, Texas
A family celebrates
its faith

Cascarones
contain a congregation
of confetti

My grandparents
are also my godparents
Adela and I are blessed
in the Sunday shade
of Pine and Oak alters

The sun swims
across the
Blue stained glass
windows
holding life
under the sea

Red dirt and
green grass
surround us
like the past.
The bloom of
a bluebonnet
reminds us all
where we come from.

Without a word
I offer
a thousand smiles
to the sky
in between
slices
of pecan pie—

I never want
to say goodbye.

Leave a comment
April 28, 2020

25/30: THIRTY-FIVE INCHES TALL

Jessi picks up a crayon with purpose.
Every color is her favorite color.
She talks a sing-song of thoughts
under her breath,
washing
the white paper sky
ignoring the lines,
she orbits around
with color after color,
determined to create.
I ask her, what she created
and she answers,
This is what I created!
I laugh and tell her to keep going.
It is Saturday afternoon and
Jessi is the color of joy.
We paint the day together.
She asks if I’m going to color
with her,
and I pick up a crayon
like an old friend.
She laughs like a color wheel.
It sounds like my favorite color.
Reminds me of my brother,
her father, and when we were boys,
we would do everything together.
Now his daughter is in my house,
three years old, thirty-five inches tall.

 

Leave a comment
April 11, 2020

9/30: NEVER A CURSE

Cutting squash and zucchini
I’m talking to my mom on the phone
listening to her tell me about her day
at the end of the day. I called her
because today is my grandpa’ Fred’s birthday.
He turns 79.  I was not there to celebrate you,
grandpa, like the years before, surrounded by family,
where we ate BBQ, and cake made just for us,
both April babies, blowing out candles and
laughing forever. Today, my gratitude shines through.

And yet, on this same day, I cannot find the words.
It’s been a year since my grandma passed.
Her name was Theresa.
I was not there to say goodbye.
It’s been a year since one of my best friends passed.
His name was Keaton.
I am still grieving
Not yet ready to give a voice
to that quiet monster.
This is so new.
My grief and gratitude,
sitting in the same room.
Listening to my mom
laugh over the phone,
as I ask her who
all I’m supposed to invite
to the rehearsal dinner.
I’m getting married in December
to the woman I love. I will always
choose this life. Even when I don’t have
the right words. Yeah, it’s strange
to carry so many emotions at once
But I consider it a blessing.
Never a curse.

 

 

Leave a comment
May 1, 2018

29/30: A POEM FOR JESSI

Jessi,
bird of my heart,
monkey in my bed,
giraffe of my dreams,
you sing to me in your
baby-talk, in your
gimme-dat clap, in your
nap-time nuh-uh cry,
oh my Jessi, you are everything
you are supposed to be. Right now,
you are shouting for the sky as the
swing-set in the park down the street
from my house brings you closer to the
moon, the stars, the sun, each one: all shining
for you. This is what the light does: it tells us
to reach, to look up, to swing into our shadows
so that darkness will not ask for this dance.
Even now, the Oak trees see you becoming one
with yourself, and I am helplessly in awe at the
call of your voice, the raw power of your smile,
and how I wish you could stay a little while longer.
In this swing, your joy sings me a song. I watch you
rejoice in the shade, alive and singing, here with me.

Leave a comment
April 17, 2018

15/30: fruit cup empanadas

Sometimes I feel like the opposite of a witness. With my own eyes, I have nothing to report. I gather memories from my grandmother’s garden. I’m holding her life in my hands and I am held captive. I am a helpless spectator. I piece the details of her life together like a bouquet unafraid of decay. Opposite of omnipresent, I rake the leaves into a pile and picture her mind the same way I picture a tree changing colors.I don’t know the consequence of missing information. I regret to inform you, I still can’t say where my ancestors came from. Show me a map, and I’d laugh at the lines defining borders but never me. If my blood has a story, then nobody ever told me the beginning. But listening to stories over the stove, I discover the fire is alive in my grandma’s eyes. Her voice a wood stove. Her love a warm home. Waiting to eat, I’m fed a story from her childhood, about fruit cup empanadas, and my grandma recites every ingredient of her memory. The recipe of the past is bound to repeat.

 

Leave a comment
April 11, 2018

10/30: GRASSHOPPERS IN THE SKY

Me? I got me 4 brothers. Corey, Brent, Jesse, Kyler. Blood-bound. I love these men with all my heart, always have, ever since the start. How lucky of me, to be both big and little brother. I used to be a bother. I used to be a small king. I used to be a pawn. I used to be a boy who knew joy was simple like falling asleep on Brent’s shoulders in the backseat of the car cause Corey always got the front. Jesse asleep on mine. Eventually Kyler on his. This is the song I recall. Sometimes the words change. Like I’m never forgetting what I’m not. Always searching for who I’ve been. You know I can count the poems where I throw the word loneliness around like a stone but truth is, I ain’t never been alone. Not truly. I was raised by boys whose names I knew only as roots, as proof of who I am or was or could be. My bruised and busted lip is a trip down memory lane. I lie awake thinking of my brothers somewhere away from me. Their faces are my history. Their names a story only I can tell. One hug from them and all my pain is resolved. I got me 4 brothers. All of us the same but all of us different. Like clouds in the sky. I know we belong together though we may precipitate with different precision. All my mother’s sons. Blood-bound. Can we pretend the light that shines in the sky is each of my brother’s reaching out to me? Our father calls us grasshoppers and I become a creature of habit, hiding in the low-grass of the past. Did you know grasshoppers can only jump forward? Never backward. Never backward. Never backward. Never backward. Never backward.

What I’m trying to tell you is: I’m blood-bound to these men like the soil our grandfathers worked in, and every day I miss them.

Leave a comment
April 9, 2018

7/30: EATING BBQ IN LOCKHART, TEXAS (LOVE IS A LEGACY)

Eating BBQ in Lockhart, Texas
Celebrating mine and my grandpa’s birthday
He is 77 and I am 26
We are generations apart
but my mother placed his name
between the first and the last
as if to remind me
the last thing I will ever be is
alone

Eating BBQ in Lockhart, Texas
I travel back in time to every holiday,
summer break, church service, family
reunion or party where I would run between
the legs of nameless cousins, battling for my
mother’s and brother’s attention
Trying my best to be seen by the sea of people
floating in the sea of love that is my family’s legacy

Eating BBQ in Lockhart, Texas
I am inside a palace of smoke
where every person holds a spark
in their heart
Love is a legacy we keep ablaze
in the way we say mijo,
in the way we say mija,

I see my niece crawl across the wood floors
where my Grandpa Caballero once stood
Leading me by hand into the heart of the smoke
Oak burning like an orchestra of ash

Eating BBQ in Lockhart, Texas
The world is crowded with everyone who knows my name
I am surrounded by bluebonnets and brisket
I am somewhere I am supposed to be
In this place where I found my face
in the hard heat
in the warmth of a ritual

Eating BBQ in Lockhart, Texas
I understand the meaning of a place
that stays the same while you are busy changing
Watching the smoke drift, I am drawn to
how it
comes
how it
goes
how it
moves
how it
knows
to come back
home.

2 Comments