2001: a portrait
BY EDYTHE RODRIGUEZ
Hotdogs bubbled on the stove
as we shuffled to the laundry room.
I held the quarters. Mama held our clothes. They spun
in the washer and I twirled right with them.
Once, I busted my lip on the staircase in her building,
being greedy, tryna pick up the M&M’s I dropped.
Mama had the spades table, where my aunts came to empty
their pockets. The most change I’d ever seen in one place.
The dead end on washington flooded flooded
when it rained rained.
Mama bartended while I hogged the jukebox
playing “It Wasn’t Me” by Shaggy to death.
I was only 5. I wasn’t sposed to be in there,
but everyone knew her and my mother and me.
Grandpa sat his folding chair tween his house and the bodega,
square in front of the park we played in.
Grandma hovered from the third-floor window,
yelling down to her kids and their kids and their kids.
Apartment [redacted] had a boogeyman in it.
Like the rest of the village, we shared blood.
Grown-ups gossiped and slapped dominoes onto folding tables.
My family filled all the benches in sight.
Unc’s permanent spot in front of the bodega
meant an endless supply of chip money.
I bought huggies and funyons and cheetos. Everyone knew me.
And everyone I knew had a dollar.
I went to preschool down the street, throwing bread
to the geese while they decorated the trails with poop.
Every building had a door I could knock on
and someone I knew would let me in.
Someone I knew would be home
and suddenly that was home.
My aunt on the right. Her sister on the left.
My grandparents on the third floor.
My father’s father behind them.
My mother’s mother at the dead end.
Apartment [redacted] oozed a black sludge from the door gaps.
A smell like sulfur. Like the movies.
That’s where it happened to me. It happens to us
somewhere. Children like me aren’t children for long.
say hi to your auntie my mother demanded she’ll let you in.
I opened the door and walked briskly past him. wassup lil cuz?
Before you turn on Washington, you’ll see the big park where the big kids
played basketball. I couldn’t go without a chaperone.
They threw parties at the rec when we were little,
birthdays and baby showers and such.
[Redacted] had the best pizza and garlic knots, crust that
crunched against your teeth and cracked when you folded it.
you gotta fold ya pizza my mother says if uon fold it,
you not from New York. so I fold it.
I sang in the gospel choir at [redacted], ran
around the church basement until somebody snitched.
Mama and her sisters were ushers. They glowed in all white,
waving, passing out programs and the collection plate.
The people who love me ask why I don’t visit.
I am still trying to forgive an entire village.
The ones who raised him, gave him dollars for the store.
The people who love me love him too. We all share blood.
I visit once a year to meet my quota and float
past the boogeyman’s door like a ghost.
My body knows to hold its breath, knows we are still 5.
I walk three blocks through a graveyard of little girls.
Pac in the Tub
BY EDYTHE RODRIGUEZ
gold glints at the neck first. then spots his mouth crown by crown. pinky ring bouncing off the brown of us, precarity speckles the body. we do this often. we, two-toned gods of a flickering survival. tendrils dangle from every hangable piece of us, our chains made of a shine made in our image. name plates ring our necks like nooseknots and I wonder, do he glitter yet? do he turn the right heads? do he slim with a hunger for more or is it ever enough? surround him in ceramic and camera flash, in a bunch of shit can’t nobody afford but all the boys will reach for. all the boys be dripped out with the cable off. be draped in enough gold to feed Oakland and dear, dear afeni. he got his 24 carats and a mule.
motions
BY EDYTHE RODRIGUEZ
I haven’t had time to think of you as I’ve been tending to my plants. The sheer time it takes to dress for the garden can fill a morning. The sharp shears, protective gloves, the thick cargo pants I shimmy my thighs into. I section rows with thin twine / without distraction. I am simply too healed for your pestering memory, just as I had planned. simply too busy planting lavender, geranium, catmint, lungwort, sweet rocket, wisteria, sea holly, globe thistle, salvias. all flowers. all purple. your favorite.