My Wicked Wicked Ways: Poems
Sandra Cisneros
MY WICKED WICKED WAYS
Sandra Cisneros was born in Chicago in 1954. Internationally acclaimed for her poetry and fiction, which has been translated into more than twenty languages, she has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Lannan Literary Award, the American Book Award, and the Thomas Wolfe Prize, and of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the MacArthur Foundation. Cisneros is the author of two novels, The House on Mango Street and Caramelo; a collection of short stories, Woman Hollering Creek; two books of poetry, My Wicked Wicked Ways and Loose Woman; a children’s book, Hairs/Pelitos; a selected anthology of her own work, Vintage Cisneros; and, with Ester Hernández, Have You Seen Marie?, a fable for adults. She is the founder of the Macondo Foundation, an association of writers united to serve underserved communities. Find her online at www.sandracisneros.com.
ALSO BY SANDRA CISNEROS
Caramelo
Woman Hollering Creek
The House on Mango Street
Loose Woman (poetry)
Hairs/Pelitos (for young readers)
Vintage Cisneros
Have You Seen Marie? (with Ester Hernández)
FIRST VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES EDITION, APRIL 2015
Copyright © 1987 by Sandra Cisneros
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Ltd., Toronto. Previously published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. Originally published in paperback by Third Woman Press, Berkeley, California, in 1987, and in hardcover by Turtle Bay Books, New York, in 1992.
Vintage and colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Some of these poems have appeared previously in Bad Boys, Nuestro, Revista Chicano-Riqueña, Quarterly West, Prairie Voices, The Spoon River Quarterly, Mango, Third Woman, Banyan Anthology 2, Ecos, Imagine, and Contact II.
Permissions acknowledgments are available here.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Cisneros, Sandra.
My wicked wicked ways / Sandra Cisneros.
p. cm
I. Title
PS3553.I78M9 1992 811′.54—dc20 92-14852
Vintage Books Trade Paperback ISBN 9781101872505
eBook ISBN 9781101872512
eBook design adapted from printed book design by Anne Scatto
Cover design by Cecile Brune
Cover painting: La Panchanela con Acordión y Bailadora by Terry Ybañez, from the collection of Robin Teague.
www.vintagebooks.com
v4.1
a
Tarde o temprano,
for Rubén
PREFACE
“I can live alone and I love to work.”—MARY CASSATT
“Allí está el detalle.”*—CANTINFLAS
Gentlemen, ladies. If you please—these
are my wicked poems from when.
The girl grief decade. My wicked nun
years, so to speak. I sinned.
Not in the white-woman way.
Not as Simone voyeuring the pretty
slum city on a golden arm. And no,
not wicked like the captain of the bad
boy blood, that Hollywood hoodlum
who boozed and floozed it up,
hell-bent on self-destruction. Not me.
Well. Not much. Tell me,
how does a woman who.
A woman like me. Daughter of
a daddy with a hammer and blistered feet
he’d dip into a washtub while he ate his dinner.
A woman with no birthright in the matter.
What does a woman inherit
that tells her how
to go?
My first felony—I took up with poetry.
For this penalty, the rice burned.
Mother warned I’d never wife.
Wife? A woman like me
whose choice was rolling pin or factory.
An absurd vice, this wicked wanton
writer’s life.
I chucked the life
my father’d plucked for me.
Leapt into the salamander fire.
A girl who’d never roamed
beyond her father’s rooster eye.
Winched the door with poetry and fled.
For good. And grieved I’d gone
when I was so alone.
In my kitchen, in the thin hour,
a calendar Cassatt chanted:
Repeat after me—
I can live alone and I love to…
What a crock. Each week, the ritual grief.
That decade of the knuckled knocks.
I took the crooked route and liked my badness.
Played at mistress.
Tattooed an ass.
Lapped up my happiness from a glass.
It was something, at least.
I hadn’t a clue.
What does a woman
willing to invent herself
at twenty-two or twenty-nine
do? A woman with no who nor how.
And how was I to know what was unwise.
I wanted to be writer. I wanted to be happy.
What’s that? At twenty. Or twenty-nine.
Love. Baby. Husband.
The works. The big palookas of life.
Wanting and not wanting.
Take your hands off me.
I left my father’s house
before the brothers,
vagabonded the globe
like a rich white girl.
Got a flat.
I paid for it. I kept it clean.
Sometimes the silence frightened me.
Sometimes the silence blessed me.
It would come get me.
Late at night.
Open like a window,
hungry for my life.
I wrote when I was sad.
The flat cold.
When there was no love—
new, old—
to distract me.
No six brothers
with their Fellini racket.
No mother, father,
with their wise I told you.
I tell you,
these are the pearls
from that ten-year itch,
my jewels, my colicky kids
who fussed and kept
me up the wicked nights
when all I wanted was…
With nothing in the texts to tell me.
But that was then,
The who-I-was who would become the who-I-am.
These poems are from that hobbled when.
11TH OF JUNE, 1992
Hydra, Greece
* * *
* (Roughly translated: There’s the rub.)
Funding for completion of this manuscript was provided in part by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, for which I am grateful. I would also like to express my gratitude to the University of Texas at Austin and the Texas Institute of Letters for their generosity and support of my work. Finally, my sincerest thanks to editor Norma Alarcón for faith and, above all, patience.
CONTENTS
Cover
About the Author
Also by Sandra Cisneros
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Preface
Acknowledgments
I • 1200 South/2100 West
Velorio
Sir James South Side
South Sangamon
Abuelito Who
Arturo Burro
/>
Mexican Hat Dance
Good Hotdogs
Muddy Kid Comes Home
I Told Susan Reyna
Twister Hits Houston
Curtains
Joe
Traficante
II • My Wicked Wicked Ways
My Wicked Wicked Ways
Six Brothers
Mariela
Josie Bliss
I the Woman
Something Crazy
In a redneck bar down the street
Love Poem #1
The blue dress
The Poet Reflects on Her Solitary Fate
His Story
III • Other Countries
Letter to Ilona from the South of France
Ladies, South of France—Vence
December 24th, Paris—Notre-Dame
Beautiful Man—France
Postcard to the Lace Man—The Old Market, Antibes
Letter to Jahn Franco—Venice
To Cesare, Goodbye
Ass
Trieste—Ciao to Italy
Peaches—Six in a Tin Bowl, Sarajevo
Hydra Night—House on Fire
Hydra Coming Down in Rain
Fishing Calamari by Moon
Moon in Hydra
One Last Poem for Richard
For a Southern Man
IV • The Rodrigo Poems
A woman cutting celery
Sensuality Plunging Barefoot Into Thorns
Valparaiso
I understand it as a kiss
For All Tuesday Travelers
No Mercy
The world without Rodrigo
Rodrigo Returns to the Land and Linen Celebrates
Beatrice
Rodrigo de Barro
Rodrigo in the Dark
The So-and-So’s
Monsieur Mon Ami
Drought
By Way of Explanation
Amé, Amo, Amaré
Men Asleep
New Year’s Eve
14 de julio
Tantas Cosas Asustan, Tantas
Permissions
1200 SOUTH/2100 WEST
I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life.
I want a peek at the back
Where it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows.
A girl gets sick of a rose.
—GWENDOLYN BROOKS
Velorio
You laughing Lucy
and she calls us in
your mother
Rachel me you I remember
and the living room dark
for our eyes to get used to
That was the summer Lucy remember
we played on the back
porch where rats hid under
And bad boys passed to look
and look at us and we look back
Lucy think how it was
Rachel me you
we fresh from sun and dirty
the living room pink
The paint chipped blue beneath
so bright for our eyes
to get used to and in rows and rows
The kitchen chairs facing front
where in a corner is a satin box
with a baby in it
Who is your sister Lucy
your mama not crying
saying stay pray to Jesus
That baby in a box like a valentine
and I thinking it is wrong
us in our raw red ankles
And mosquito legs
Rachel wanting to go back out again
you sticking one dirty finger in
Said cold cold the living
room pink Lucy and your hair
smelling sharp like corn
Sir James South Side
Sugar Rat the sweet-lipped one
says he will love her like no other
Genuine Forever and She—He is insane
Though gang love is true love
and I no jousting brother
a wild mouth is crazy and bad aim
I play the game straight
don’t go looking for trouble
not capping nor the heart’s high bail
no sir I say just party in peace
to all people that walk by or ride
South Sangamon
We wake up
and it’s him
banging and banging
and the doorknob rattling open up.
His drunk cussing,
her name all over the hallway
and my name mixed in.
He yelling from the other side open
and she yelling from this side no.
A long time of this
and we saying nothing
just hoping he’d get tired and go.
Then the whole door shakes
like his big foot meant to break it.
Then quiet
so we figured he’d gone.
That day he punched her belly
the whole neighborhood watching
that was Tuesday.
So this time we lock it.
And just when we got those kids quiet,
and me, I shut my eyes again,
she laughing,
her cigarette lit,
just then
the big rock comes in.
Abuelito Who
Abuelito who throws coins like rain
and asks who loves him
who is dough and feathers
who is a watch and glass of water
whose hair is made of fur
is too sad to come downstairs today
who tells me in Spanish you are my diamond
who tells me in English you are my sky
whose little eyes are string
can’t come out to play
sleeps in his little room all night and day
who used to laugh like the letter k
is sick
is a doorknob tied to a sour stick
is tired shut the door
doesn’t live here anymore
is hiding underneath the bed
who talks to me inside my head
is blankets and spoons and big brown shoes
who snores up and down up and down up and down again
is the rain on the roof that falls like coins
asking who loves him
who loves him who?
Arturo Burro
Jacinto el pinto
Maria tortilla
Agustín es zonzo
tin tan tan
and we hide
yeah we hide
we got Arturo
inside inside
my brother
who spins his eyes
Mama says nothing
she never says nothing
Papa makes us promise to lie
3 kids we got remember it
but we got Arturo inside
He moves slow
like an elephant goes
and spits and spits
and never cries
and won’t grow old
and won’t grow old
my brother who spins his eyes
Mexican Hat Dance
Crash the record came down on your head.
Your were trying to dance the Mexican hat dance.
The black disc on the floor and your shiny feet
taping this way and then over that.
So you missed. So you’re a lousy dancer.
Your mother, never amused by your jokes,
besides, it was her favorite record—Lucha Villa,
the lady who sings with tears in her throat,
picks it up and cracks it over your head.
Come out of that bathroom.
No, I’m never coming out!
Good Hotdogs
For Kiki
Fifty cents apiece
To eat our lunch
We’d run
Straight from school
Instead of home
Two blocks
Then the store
That smelled like steam
You ordered
Because you had the money
Two hotdogs and two pops for here
Everything on the hotdogs
Except pickle lily
Dash those hotdogs
Into buns and splash on
All that good stuff
Yellow mustard and onions
And french fries piled on top all
Rolled up in a piece of wax
Paper for us to hold hot
In our hands
Quarters on the counter
Sit down
Good hotdogs
We’d eat
Fast till there was nothing left
But salt and poppy seeds even
The little burnt tips
Of french fries
We’d eat
You humming
And me swinging my legs
Muddy Kid Comes Home
And Mama complains
Mama whose motto
Is mud must remain
Mama who acts
So uppity up
Says mud can’t come in
Says mud must stay put
Mama who thinks that
Mud is uncouth
Cannot remember
Can hardly recall
Mud’s what I was
When I wasn’t at all
But mud must remain
Or Mama complains
Mama who cannot
Remember her name
I Told Susan Reyna
I told Susan Reyna
I don’t like her
because she’s fat and ugly
and she wears big brassieres
and smells like chocolate candy
and comes in late each morning
with her tongue puff puffing
and her wrinkled blouse
half in half out
and who probably stole
Walter Milky’s money