Daphne Maysonet

My mother watches Walter, doubtless

the same as forty years ago, when young

and married, she wondered if she’d find

love. Now, at evening, she has seen

any impossibly curvy talk show host herald

his visit in the interlude between telenovelas.

Quieting the young and old children

of the house, she puckers mouth

to finger, flexes the lines of her brows,

her facial muscles no less fluid

than a child’s. Her Spanglish music dipthongs

at the cállates, singing rare silence

over us while Walter manifests on TV.

By name, he is man, but to see him,

much more. Ring-gilt knuckles glaze

a crystal ball as he zodiac jazzes

the good news, his lips stung into fullness,

his cheeks erected to pyramids and smoothed

to domes. His eyebrows, like my mother’s,

match Disco-era capes and jumpsuits that orbit

his body, that sweep the mamís’ afternoon

cafecitos with tender glamour. My mother imagines

that she is sixteen again, practicing dances

from Saturday Night Fever in her father’s basement,

the twirls and struts gathering her feathered

red hair to wings. She dreams of flying

to a heaven of teenage crushes, she the only

child, unmade of motherhood, her body hemmed

to its full gift to use differently this time,

to render inhospitable to any who would grow

to need her. Homeunmaker. Paradise

regained, where Walter presides, genderless

and omniscient as he is onscreen. By name

he is man, but by my mother, mystic. I watch her

as she watches him chanting through sun signs

and third houses—her pupils open-handed

for promises to keep her from mixing

the pills with liquor again, demanding warnings

to make fortune feel real. I watch him, too.

I read his king-sized gestures—his late-Elvis,

High Priestess beauty. I study how Gemini

sounds with short vowels. When it’s over,

my mother will ask if I’ve understood

what he said, and I will lie, struggle

to translate my horoscope until she smiles

into her power and mercy for sentencing.