University of Northern Iowa

Words with Taloned ClawsAuthor(s): Eileen MaloneSource: The North American Review, Vol. 289, No. 2, National Poetry Month (Mar. - Apr.,2004), p. 12Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25127123 .

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NAR

EILEEN MALONE

Words with Taloned Claws

These spiked words about how my son

stopped being my son, became my enemy are too matted, too sad; they will cause you

to shy away, so I draw you in washed

in mauve and gold light

view from the wrong end of a telescope a skimming bird, lilac swallow of shade

that drops feathers on a late-day sea

beyond this marsh where wind laps up all the indigo, I'm there, here, writing

what I say can be found in other letters

from unloved mothers to beloved sons

usually found years later stashed in the backs

of chipped, damp drawers, never sent

I had no choice, no matter how you believe

I sinned, seized or stilted, believe me

the things I did, the things I didn't do

every madness-ravaged minute, I loved you

like the bird who dies for the sake of its hatching

dripping blood from its broken beak, crying out

I write these words with taloned claws

rip them into bits of wet pulpy text

submit them as sodden, weedy shadows

dropped on watery marshes to be picked up

salvaged by other beaks, other mothers

to hang out to dry in order to use later as lining as softening,

as warm intuitive comforting

in other damaged

and abandoned nests.

MARIO REN? PADILLA

Once, I Wanted to Be Ritchie Valens

When I was ten, I wanted to be Ritchie Valens.

Brown skin like his, standing on a couch

I stood upon a stage in his burgundy sharkskin suit, a triple-pickup Fender strapped around my neck

(really just a broom and a piece of rope), no soy marinero but a rock and roll star

that some blond, blue-eyed girl from Germantown, Ohio,

might finally find something in me to admire.

At twenty-one I moved to Hollywood, and after a time, I wanted to be Cheech Marin.

It was the seventies and to be like him

I smoked reefer and said ?rale and vato and pinche cabr?n ese.

Then I went to Tijuana for one long day of drink and fun

with office friends named Matt and Allen and Fred

looking for cheap leather coats and some black wrought-iron chairs we drank cold beers in dark illicit bars

and I bought a ceramic bull with leather horns tipped in red,

passing up a painting of Pancho Villa on black velvet

for a pair of maracas that said Welcome to Tijuana.

And crossing back into San Diego,

they singled me out, ignoring the others in the car:

"Are you an American?" they asked.

And how dare they ask me this in Spanish, me with only three months of Cheech and Chong under my belt

and the high school Spanish I'd always flunked, and shit, wasn't I the same midwestern kid

they let pass that morning without a single suspicious comment?

FINALISTS JAMES HEARST POETRY PRIZE

12 NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW March-April 2004

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