Silvia Brandon: Two Poems
all you want to hear | He wore Imperial by Guerlain

all you want to hear

is dire news, gory
underpinnings
of bedraggled inner cities

i want to talk about my girl
a precious grandbebé
i held last month, no teeth

a crooked smile,
as close to heaven and its taste
as anything i've yet experienced

but you would like
to hear about the children
dying of hunger every day

little boys mutilated
on their way to school
you want to ask me

why the cliché
you say that heaven has no taste
heaven is a concept so passé...

and yet if you had smelled
my sweet grandbebé's breath
if you had seen her toothless smile

you'd know heaven has a simple taste
of sweet arroz con leche with canela
a smell of first rain in the primavera

a new smell, a new smell of bebé
bright posies in her cheeks
tiny tamale feet

but all you want to hear
because the times they call
for classy cynicism

is about hell

He wore Imperial by Guerlain

when i was smaller than a dream
i lived with my abuelo
in a house populated by stray cats
a dog or two
chickens in the yard for eggs
and Oxford's dictionary

papi was busy playing slots
listening to Ella and to Nat
trying to be the son abuelo wanted
or not
mami worked as a secretary
in an insurance firm
she was a lovely girl
blue eyes, black hair
a ready smile
her boss, a lecher from way back
married to money
had slept with all the girls
mami held back
he left his wife
mami left papi

he was her senior by over
twenty years
he left his wife upon her dying bed
for mami's ass

he stood outside the porch
as we trooped out to school
and pinched our starchy uniforms
to see if we were wearing girdles
avoid the jingling of the flesh

he sat in fat commercial pulchritude
and told us always to say no
never to allow the hands of man
except in marriage
to graze the skin below the skirt

he told my baby brother
girls were for pleasure
to paw them, bed them

when i was twelve
he woke me up
with hands below the sheets
i learned never to stay home
alone

on weekends he would sit
and sermonize
discuss the state
of the republic
how blacks were lazy
gringas sluts
women inferior

he told us how he'd drowned
neighborhood kittens
as a sport
and kicked the dog
when no one watched
I thought if I encountered evil
it would have a smell
of rot or sewage

he wore Imperial
by Guerlain

Poet's Biography:

Silvia Antonia Brandon Pérez, born 1949, La Habana, Cuba, mother of 4 sons, 1 daughter, and new abuela to two beautiful little girls; presently living in Pennsylvania, published in various online and print journals, including Conspire, Disquieting Muses, Recursive Angel, The Poet's Canvas, Third Muse. Poems in Spanish included in a print anthology called Juntos published in Barcelona this past fall. Editor of Spanish edition of Niederngasse, an online and print poetry journal at (http://www.niederngasse.com).