Tag: childhood

Dekalb Avenue

Dekalb Avenue

Dekalb is titi’s house.
Grover Cleveland’s tracks lead to 
Dr. Mederos on St. Nicholas,
Chinese on Wyckoff by the B38,
Corner of Irving, a brick building — beige. 

Crosses jutting out all over.
My whole childhood, shuttered.
Sophi’s hair salon after.
Tony’s Pizza on the corner of Knickerbocker.

The cuchifrito, Cecilia’s, where titi always gets the mangú.
Next to the newsstand where uncle Louie gets the gum that tastes like soap.

This is titi’s block.

Across from the place you can rent for parties.
Three creaky metal studded flights up 
that are shorter than the length of your feet
so you always feel like you’re falling even when you’re climbing.

Her bell never works. Gotta scream.
From out her metal barred window, she drops the keys.
Dekalb is the turrón titi ate with me.
The clothesline outside her window, wooden clothespins pinched between her lips.
The Reggaeton, the Salsa, the Merengue, the Bachata,
at all hours of the morning, never letting poor titi sleep.

The only survivor now is the pizzeria, and the tracks.
The rest you can only visit in memories, photos, or Google Maps.
Yo.
They even gentrified the piraqua stands.

Leave my ice alone.
Dekalb Avenue. Not “Deh-kolb.” The L train says it wrong.
Dee-Kalb. It’s titi’s house. It’s childhood. It’s home.

Feeling nostalgic. May polish it for “sound” later. Love you, titi! Muchiiisimo!

Scissors

Scissors

When you cut me from your life,

did you use scissors?

 

Did you cut carefully

like I was a curving,

challenging,

stencil?

 

Occasionally I feel like

a frayed ghost limb

from a thoughtless tear.

 

Maybe I was creased first

before you casually

pulled           me              apart.

 

Tugged. Me.

With the same soft swipes you’d use

to shoo dust off your loved one’s cheek.

 

Did you use a cookie cutter?

I’ve felt shaped differently since.

 

I don’t feel you balled me in your fists before discarding me,

but I feel crumbled nonetheless.

 

Did you commit my calligraphy

to memory?

Recalled our childhood and chronicled

all we had,

held me to your heart,

before you severed us?

 

Whether you shunned me away into a

water-stained box, full

of your childhood knick knacks, waiting

for your hands to wrinkle to be

treasured again,

or tossed me into the same wastebasket

of shredded due dates and credit card offers,

I still have to ask.

 

Did you have the decency to use a pair of shears?

Once they said we were cut

from the same cloth.

Yet I still feel the ripping

from your bare

clenching hands.

 

– Rachel R. Vasquez, September 2017

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A Halloween Memory

A Halloween Memory

All Saint’s Eve, daddy took little miss piggy

to the Cypress and Harman bakery,

where they gave her cookies and pennies,

and her pumpkin was brimming,

until mommy stripped wrappers

off tootsies and suckers by evening.

Inspect for catheters, needles and blades.

Don’t get too gleeful,

mommy checks for evil and lethal –

all to keep her piggy’s kisser safe.

 

– Rachel R. Vasquez, Oct. 2017

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It’s not Halloween anymore, but better late than never. Didn’t originally title this – but it is what it is. 🙂 Once upon a time, my mother would check every single piece of candy I received on Halloween just to make sure it was safe before I could eat any.

Old Places

Old Places

For those places
no longer home.
Kept safest
in your minds own.

Heart aches for trodden roads.
Soul weighs with forgotten ghosts.

A hum whose words are lost,
of curtains drawn,
and bridges crossed.

The streets recede
twisted and strange.
I know this dream
if only by name.

This Avenue’s familiar.
The gates –
The doors –
In another world similar
I’ve been before.

They beckon from pictures,
from over my shoulder.
Yet once I’ve turned,
they slip even farther.

Someplace traversed
and somewhere fond.
I can never return
once they’ve gone.

– Rachel R. Vasquez, 11/11/2015

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“If I come back, it will be a place, but it won’t be home any longer.” – The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

I’m learning a common pattern in my life. From old jobs to old schools, once you’ve left a place in that point of time, you can never return. Even if you do, it will never be the same. It never feels the same. You can miss what it was, wish for it to become that place again, but that place is just a place once it’s no longer home.

Child’s Fairy Tale

When I was a child, I saw with blinded eyes.

White sheets by my side down my living room aisle.

Human porcelain came to life and lip-gloss gave me years.

Plastic plugs clipped on my ears, a lollipop took away tears.

Pairs of socks stuffed into my shirt, toes sink into giant shoes.

Little pink frills upon my skirt and a piece of rubber to chew.

Pink cotton fluffs propped up on sticks, games that I never lose.

Magic tricks and vanilla splotched cheeks,

No sickness a mother couldn’t soothe.

 

Sunflower fields and golden wings around my head.

Bare feet pitter-pattering, when I believed everything said.

When a penny was a lot and money had colors.

Boy was the world nice then!

Tucked into bed with a goodnight kiss,

to awaken to a reality without mend.

 

Empty spaces during dark phases,

the world just cries and wails.

No white horses, just fifty percent divorces,

a world full of broken fairy tales.

Ripped pages and dried ink, the fantasy is now the past.

Tears at the brink from this reality, breaking the heart like glass.

Dying trees, unknown disease, and an education that always fails.

So next time you see a little girl with wings, underneath her golden veil.

Just keep passing by; it’d best be wise, to not say a single word.

Just hope she doesn’t open her eyes,

peaceful and undisturbed.

 

For being a child is a luxury,

she deserves the sugarcoated lies.

At least for a while, at least for some time,

Let the poor girl taste the sweets.

Because as she lives and the pages all end,

that’s all it’ll ever be.

A sweetness with a bad after taste.

Just a nice sugar coated dream.

 

– Rachel R. Vasquez, 4/30/2006, edited 4/30/2015

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Wow, I wrote this almost an entire decade ago! I found it and realized I had written it the same day as today, except it was 2006. I thought it was meant to be published here today. This was originally inspired by a quote from the bible and my dark afterthoughts at the time. I was purposely aiming for that nursery rhyme feel.

When I was a child, I talked like a child, felt like a child, reasoned like a child: when I became a man, I put from me childish ways

1 Corinthians 13:11

Pigeons

Sopa de paloma.
Does mama pluck them?
From the fence?
From the street?

Before she chucks them,
not from the sky,
but brethren
with feet upright
into the pot.

Does she fetch a price for their beaks?

Do the eyes get so hot,
they burst?
Not chicken,
the birds?

Do they come from allá?

The pigeons in the soup
perched on roof ridges,
not pollo,
but bludgeoned herds,
not frozen,
but all bones and sofrito.

No lo entiendo.

Mama looks to mommy being told
“Deja la niña,” as she cooks.

Tell me quick!
With haste!
Do they know what I sip?
La paloma, not poultry.
Will I ever be forgiven?

 

– Rachel R. Vasquez, ?/?/2014

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My mother once teased me as a kid that “mama”, an elderly woman who I loved as my grandmother even though she wasn’t, was actually feeding me pigeon soup and not chicken soup. Of course, this was a lie, but I might’ve believed it a little at the time. This poem was inspired by that tall tale. Thanks, mom. 🙂

School Bus

I
hinggge and hissss
at every red
where all that is smaller
than I
come to screeching halts
before bumping nose to ass
And those that are smallest
are the only
smalls I stop for

I bend every corner
like I’m trying to stretch it
Break it
Make a hole in it
Rip it
Make myself a cringe-worthy memory
They dread my visits

And I spin
like a stalling toy top
about to lay furiously
but passively
lazily
to its side

ready to die
I squeak and rust
with every movement
because every mile
is a protest

my face
a
bright
yellow
warning
morning

my mouth
open wide
as I eat your children
frappe
and
crush
with every
bump

before I spit them out
just a tad
influenced by
exteriors you have
no
control
over

 

– Rachel R. Vasquez, 2/7/2010

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PS: I hate school buses with a passion. Rode them as a kid and I think they’re terrible…