Never Flan
I am sure that everyone in my familia really enjoys flan.
But not me.
May I please taste the glazed churro,
the timeless cochito (con café and cream) or the delicate
tres leche cake.
But leave the flan on the kitchen counter
with the big can of lard, or better yet in the oven where
it may be forgotten like the untold history of the southwest.
For over fifty years my familia has asked, “You
don’t like flan? I don’t believe you.” Believe me, again, otra ves.
Flan is the caramel brick used to make the walls
Chupacabra proof. It is the drum beat that cannot keep
up with the rest of the instruments. It is the car lifted
on bricks in the front yard. The place where the chickens go
when it rains or when los ninos escape
into the yard with water balloons.
In my imagination Cantinflas only ate the flan
to perpetuate a stereotype. El Cucuy hides in the closet with
pieces of flan sliced up by his cuchio. Scared children smell
the sweet fear. I never saw a painting by Rivera
with flan as a detail, and did anyone
ever notice Frida Kahlo holding a piece of flan in her portraits?
In Orozco’s The Fall of Icarus, no flan in the sky
or in the sea. Face it flan is the overconsumed overrated dessert.
Chavela Vargas sang of the desperate crushed spirited Llorona or the
desire of the chili verde but not the flan.
Fernando Valenzuela threw the no-hitter and became the
icon of the Dodgers without flan.
Most have seen those colorful Mexican restaurant
calendars. The images are of Aztec warriors, bull fighters, mariachi musicians
and maybe even a clown tugging a rope held by a small perro’s boca.
But no flan in those popular prints.
My parents, brother and wife (who is from the Irish home tierra)
never bake up the flan.
But they do ask for it after their tacos, enchiladas and frijoles. Or a friend
will drop by my parents’ house gifting a sheet of flan. The sweet dripping
over the edges creating a sticky chaos. The caramel looking
like a ruptured oil pan. Hay caramba.
“Do you want un poco de flan?” They will ask. I will not
reply with “no” that lacks any meaning. I will just gesture
with my ten fingers and puckered lips. Gestures beyond
words. A silence meaning more than a no.
No One Cares Where We Go
Let’s go there instead of ambition’s graveyard. We can walk and talk
about what it means to linger wearing pants with pink patches
and holding shot glasses filled with boredom. The ice cubes scared
of becoming small puddles lapped up by the house cats.
Let’s just go already with our samples of destiny rubber banded together
in our backpacks which become quiet spaces in the back
of a gorgeous crowd. We can walk past the neighbor’s white
picket fence that crashed down. The wood rotten under
the soil. The shade the trees provide will help us remain cool.
Vamos hoy and claim the feeling of life in a certain moment:
the first kiss, the paleta in the summer at the ballgame, the encore
everyone wanted to hear. We will just read the list of rules.
Being not this and not that. The circumstances are us again. We dance the
big fish. We speak the morning walk. We rest the pan dulce and the pastel.
And who cares where we go?
We must remember this too, when to rage, when to listen,
when to sleep deep into the dream, when to drink more water. We have
clean shirts, peanut butter, phone numbers of impossible lovers
and we can get haircuts or not. Let’s go before mud season arrives
and the soil rises over the sidewalks and our shoes sink like a dirty sponge
in a sink full of dinner dishes. Vamos, even con the risk
of forgetting what plans we composed down on brown paper grocery bags
and promised to others.
Work This
The boss is not always right
but they are always the boss.
The pin stripes are there
reading bad newspapers
near the elevator. The shoes
polished up in fear.
This is what my amigo,
the rush hour ruffian says,
“After hours love is free”
But how soon is now?
Work is waiting for more
work. (The ejection button
is not in the employee
handbook). And you know this,
anxiety is a luxury too.
It seems the goal is
to remain boring
as long as possible.