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Abuela Warns Me a Caravan Of “Esa Gente” Is Headed Our Way

By Caridad Moro-Gronlier

After Lucille Clifton

if i should
take you
to that spot
by the water
you can’t pronounce
but love
because it reminds you
of Varadero
the fabled Cuban beach
you confessed
to having seen
only once
because the bus ride
from el campo
cost tres pesetas
too many
and as the oldest
of five siblings
you could not
leave the little ones
behind, you
so young
but already adept
at the doing without
of mothering

if i should
despite knowing
this about you
refuse to translate
the menu for you
refuse to place
your order
in English for you
if i should
stiff the blonde waiter
who does not deign
to acknowledge you
of his tip

if i should
ask it of you
then
would you
finally say

esa gente
son mi gente
esa gente
soy yo.

 


 

 

Listen as Caridad Moro-Gronlier reads Abuela Warns Me a Caravan Of Esa Gente Is Headed Our Way.”

Added: Thursday, October 20, 2022  /  Used with permission.
Caridad Moro-Gronlier

Caridad Moro-Gronlier is the author of Tortillera, winner of the TRP Southern Poetry Breakthrough Prize published by Texas Review Press (2021) and the chapbook Visionware published by Finishing Line Press (2009). She is a Contributing Editor for Grabbed: Poets and Writers Respond to Sexual Assault (Beacon Press, 2020) and Associate Editor for "SWWIM Every Day", an online daily poetry journal for women identified poets. Recent projects include "A Heroic Sonnet Crown for Mayor Daniella Levine Cava and the Residents of Miami-Dade County: We Who Rise from Saltwater, Let’s Sing," the O, Miami Off-Shore Fellowship: Poets of the Caribbean Diaspora, and publication in Home in Florida: Latinx Writers and the Literature of Uprootedness (UF Press, 2021), among others. She resides in Miami, Florida with her family. Learn more about Caridad on her website.

Image DescriptionCaridad Moro-Gronlier is a Latina woman with brown, shoulder-length hair. She stands in front of a cream-colored wall with one hand on her hip and smiles. She wears a plum short-sleeved shirt with geometric shapes on it.

Other poems by this author