Vincent Antonio Rendoni

Denial

My first girlfriend was an internet girlfriend.
We met on a Smashing Pumpkins message board.
We used to take pictures on disposable cameras.
Drop them off at the Rite Aid. Scan them. Send them.
We used to fall asleep on the phone.
We used to wait.

She collected comics. Painted & sang.
Dreamed of being a forensic investigator.
I knew everything about her except her last name.

Before we moved on to more tangible bodies,
she told me: Gonzalez.

She kept this from me.
Didn't want me to think of her as dirty.

I told her I got it.
Those quinceañera dresses.
Our abuelos & their stupid accents.
Diabetes-inducing coconut candies & Duvalin.
Pinche this. Pinche that. 
Lola Beltrán & her corny-ass rancheras.

We go down the list
of things no one knows.

The better parts of ourselves.
Serving them up, shooting each other down.

Thank God.
It didn’t clean the blood
like we thought it would.

Thank God. 

Reappropriation

I call my sister & tell her it's time to make tamale.
There's an audible sigh on the other line.
Not this shit again.

Abuela’s recipe is lost to time.
Stolen by that tia at an open-house wake.
Probably rotting away behind some Bible,
fuck you very much.

We scavenge recipes from well-meaning white ladies at Sur La Table.
& that Abuela with the ranch on YouTube.

We call the cousins & tell them it's time.
The primo with the big mouth, says the unthinkable, but true:
They're overrated.

Still, he says,
name the time, name the place.

Tamale takes time.
It cannot be sped up. It cannot be optimized.
It puts you into a corner. It cannot be stopped.

Listen, I say, setting up the stations.
Pouring one out for us & them.
We don’t have to talk.

& we don’t.
We shut the fuck up.
We fill & we fold.
Knowing full well what happens 

if we ever stopped.