Homage to Lupe

They ate bofe — lungs of cattle —
leftovers if the mistress felt generous —
scandalous to neighbors when Lupe
joined us for Sunday suppers,

our mahogany table covered with red-
clay cazuelas of stews and fricassees rich
in fat. Bibbed jowl, she slurped lagoons
de salsita, chewed gristle, sucked bones.

Never laughed — oyster gums — but give
Lupe aguardiente and she'd sing, dance
Andean huaynos, feet stomping like stones,
medals jingling, a saint for every malady.

Jorobada we called her, humped since
age seven when she sowed potato eyes
with digging sticks, bore sacks of tungstite
are down mountains thirteen thousand

feet closer to Janajpacha, Inca heaven.
Knees like church knockers from scouring
rust, dirt, and mildew, big-boned hands
that sprinkled potato starch as she ironed

Papa's clothes, socks even, in a kitchen
facing St. Christopher's Hill, gray and arid,
cement cross on its peak. Before I'd learned
it in Spanish, Lupe taught me Our Holy

Father in Quechua, the language stones
would speak if they had mouths, and after Mass
she'd take me to the convent where her favorite
saint, Martín de Porres, healed lepers,

fed Lima's poor, turning water to milk,
mud to bread. We'd take home bits of black
cloth peddled as relics, in truth cheap
polyester. When I had nightmares I'd slip

into her old fold-up bed by the laundry
room, and Lupe would hold me till I fell
asleep again, her arms soft pillows,
her breath wet and heavy like ocean fog.

Glossary

Cazuela: A serving dish made of glazed terracotta
Aguardiente: Sugarcane liquor, literally "burning water"

Orlando Ricardo Menes
Furia
Milkweed Editions

© 2005, Text by Orlando Ricardo Menes
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.

REMEMBER TO SUPPORT POETRY DAILY'S GENEROUS SPONSORS... Sponsor PD!