Source of book: I own this
Back in 2018, the kids and I listened to The House on Mango Street together on our trip to the Grand Canyon (and a few other places in Arizona.) My eldest in particular decided he loved Sandra Cisneros. And who wouldn’t?
Fast forward a few years, and my kid is in college, and takes an epic train trip to San Francisco to spend a week with his uncle and aunt. As our family does, he visited all the famous bookstores, including City Lights. He brought this book back as a Christmas gift for me, knowing we share a love of poetry.
Woman Without Shame is aptly named. The collection centers around Cisneros’ embrace of her body and herself as she finds herself in her fifties. She is less ashamed of her body, even as it has aged and drooped. She has a relationship with sex that is, shall we say, complicated. But also fascinating. I will note, for example, “You Better Not Put Me In A Poem” which is all about her many past lovers…and their penises.
Plenty of poetry collections are about love - and that is a good thing. But this was a welcome contrast in that it is not about love, but about life without romantic love, but instead filled with food, friends, poetry, and normal living.
Cisneros’ voice sounds a bit different than in her early work. She is more relaxed, more confident, less interested in what other people think, and willing to say stuff out loud. What remains the same is her keen eye for people, her love for food and music and poetry, and her gentle, subtle humor.
While most of the poems are in English (and the ones in Spanish are translated by the author), there is a good bit of Spanglish in the collection. I grew up in a primarily Hispanic neighborhood, so I only had to look up a few words to understand her meaning.
The collection was enjoyable from start to finish, and it was difficult to pick which poems to feature in this post. For the most part, I left out the longer ones, just picking a favorite line. This is not to say that the longer ones are lesser - they are excellent too, just a bit long to reproduce.
I’ll start by mentioning “Tea Dance, Provincetown, 1982.” This poem is about Cisneros’ experience at a gay bar and at a gay (unofficially) nude beach. She was the only woman there, and enjoyed the experience. She has a brief fling with a bisexual man, although he refuses to have sex because he has herpes - as Cisneros notes, this was laughable in retrospect, as AIDS was just starting to decimate the gay community, but few were aware of it at that time.
My favorite stanza is this one:
It was easy to be half naked
at a gay beach. Men
didn’t bother to look.
I was in training to be
a woman without shame.
This is one of many poems in the collection that tell a story. Tell it slant, of course, as Emily Dickinson put it. But Cisneros is, at her heart, a storyteller.
Next up is “Creed,” which really resonated with me. My understanding of God has changed a lot over the last decade, for many reasons, but primarily my observation of humanity. I wouldn’t say that I agree with Cisneros entirely, but as with poetry generally, it comes at truth from a different and less literal angle.
Creed
I believe I am God.
And you are too.
And each and everyone.
But only for a little.
I believe God is
Love, and love is God.
And although some
Doubt God’s existence,
No one doubts the existence of love,
Even and especially those who have
Never met love.
I believe we are
Capable of atrocities beyond
Imagination and equally
Capable of extraordinary
God-acts as well.
I believe
There is enough misery
In the world, but also
Humanity - just a bit
More, I believe.
I believe in the power
Of a thought, a word,
To change the world.
I believe there is not greater
Sorrow than that of a mother
Who has lost her child.
I believe in las madres,
Las madres de las madres,
Y la santisima madre,
La diosa Guadalupe.
Because the universe is large enough
To encompass contradictions,
I believe these same mothers sometimes
Create monsters - los machos.
I believe mothers and grandmothers
Are the solution to violence,
Not only in Mexico / the United States,
But across the globe.
I believe what the generals need now
Are the abuelita brigades armed with
Chanclas to shame, swat, and spank
Los meros machos del mundo.
Amen.
Another poem with a long name tells a story that I thought was fascinating, and also somewhat familiar.
Smith’s Supermarket, Taos, New Mexico, at the Fifteen-Items-or-Less Checkout Line
The baby-faced cholo in front of me
gently drops a divider bar between
what’s his and mine.
On my side, a six-outlet surge
protector for my computer,
and a fireproof glass cup
for my Lux Perpetua candle,
a votive so powerful it self-destructs.
On his,
a plastic bottle of store-brand vodka.
It’s noon, but somewhere
it’s happy hour.
Baseball cap bad-ass backwards.
Black leather from neck to knees.
One brow and ear stitched with silver.
And on his neck, “Rufina” in wispy
ink I would kiss if I could. Fool,
it takes one to know one.
I drive away wondering
if Rufina is helping him
drink his bottle of forget.
Or if it’s she who is regret.
I write until the dark descends,
My cell warm tonight.
Candles. Copal.
Outside my window,
mountain without a moon,
Buddha in lotus.
Silent and still.
By ten, hot bath, lavender salts.
Flannel buttoned to the neck.
Am certain Rufina is not
as happy as I am tonight,
in bed with my love,
a book.
Here is another one I loved:
Sky Wearing a Hat
Sky arose
with a hat all its own
made from dirty
sheep-wool.
A hat wide
enough to dye the earth
indigo and lavender with shade.
Like sea
seen from an island
facing land.
Like the pewter dishes
of country folk
who eat without spoons.
Pair this with another poem in the collection:
Sky Without a Hat
I’m going to sell
the San Miguel sky,
this jacaranda blue
that suits perfectly
clay roofs.
Of course, it’s available.
Absolutely and for sure.
Here everything is
For
Sale,
Rent,
Lease.
Mountain,
prickly pear,
hacienda,
stone,
woman,
mud.
I’ll sell sky
by the slice.
Charge foreigners
double
for doubling
the cost of living.
Attention!
Sky without shade
for sale, this celestial
blue in bad need
of a hat.
And,
if all goes
as planned:
Clouds
For Rent.
While most of the poems are not particularly political (except in the broad sense), there are some that are more explicit. Like this one.
This in the News Unmentioned
The aged seamstress on
The old road to Queretaro
Has no work. Her
Sewing machine is broken.
Her eyes as well.
The rose seller from Santa Julia
Reads Neruda and dreams
Of buying his mother a stove.
It is the time of rain. She
Cooks outdoors with firewood.
The housekeeper’s five
Sons have all gone north.
Her favorite won’t phone, and
She can neither read nore write.
Meanwhile, arms drift south
And drugs shift north.
The avocados, beyond the budget
Of the seamstress, rose seller,
Housekeeper, travel north too
This season.
Police. Politicians.
Mexico. United States.
Business always good
Between the two
Nations.
There is another related line in the longer poem, “El Hombre.”
Message from Mexico to
The United States of America:
When we are safe, you are safe.
When you are safe, we are safe.
Tell this to your politicians.
Since I read this collection around Halloween, I had to include this one.
Dia de los Muertos
On Day of the Dead I ask you to come
home with me to see my altar.
That’s a better line than come and see my etchings.
You do come. Like the spirits that night.
You follow the xempoaxochitl petals and make
your way to my door, that door abandoned and
solitary a full year. You make your way and say
you’ve been said, and I say I’ve been sad too,
because it’s true, I have.
The one before you
alive and haunting my heart, and I
want and long for release from the hurting.
You come with your own ghost following you.
Save me, we think, but don’t say it.
I ask, Thirsty? And serve you mezcal before you answer.
Drink the bottle left for los difuntos, clink our copitas.
I’ll send you home with the cabrito I set out for my father,
the chocolate bizcochitos, the bunuelos on a clay plate.
Everything but the confetti jello, I say, and laugh.
Sal y agua on this altar. Salt perhaps for our tears,
water for the dead who are always thirsty.
Scent of warm wax candles and acrid marigolds.
Edith Piaf singing “La vie en rose.” Chavela Vargas.
Lola Beltran. Nina Simone’s “I Put a Spell on You.”
And I wonder if that cabrito will cast its magic spell.
The night is long.
We talk late though you have to get up early.
Talk while the dead come back and savor us. Talk,
which is a kind of alimento, a nourishing.
Talk con ganas, as they say. You and I.
With feeling.
There are a number of poems that I wanted to mention lines from - they really are excellent both in context and as stand-alone ideas.
From “Having Recently Escaped from the Maws of a Deathly Life, I Am Ready to Begin the Year Anew”:
All toxic folk are to be excised from the remaining days of my life, the chupacabras and chupacabronas, who are a purgatory of pain.
That line is so good in every way. Toxic people suck your life force, and the keep you in a purgatory of pain. Starting at age 40, I have been excising people like that from my life, whether they are acquaintances from my Fundie years, or family members who have chosen to abuse rather than love. My remaining years are too few to waste inflicting pain on myself via toxic people.
Also related is this one from “Buen arbol / A Good Tree”:
I don’t have time for attitude sickness
At this altitude.
I don’t have time for percolators,
Nuclear reactors.
My favorite line in “Mount Everest,” a memory of her younger years and love affairs:
His name?
Ethan. Seamus.
Elton. Or Ian.
Poetry to me.
An empire to conquer.
A foreign language to master.
A notch on my unchastity
belt when my notches
were few.
“A notch on my unchastity belt” is just a great line.
I’ll close with the closing poem in the collection, which is also a favorite. I considered quoting only a line or two, but decided the whole thing was wonderful.
When in Doubt
When in doubt,
Wear faux leopard.
When in doubt,
Err on the side of generosity.
When in doubt,
Greet everyone as you would the Buddha.
When in doubt,
Collect blessings from those who own nothing.
When in doubt,
Absorb biographies to avoid life’s major mistakes.
When in doubt,
Make life’s major mistakes.
When in doubt,
Pay attention to the vendor shouting “Diooooos,”
Even when you find out he was only shouting “Gaaaaas.”
When in doubt,
Carry a handkerchief and a fan.
When in doubt,
Thank everyone. Twice.
When in doubt,
Heed the clouds.
When in doubt,
Sleep on it.
When in doubt,
Treat all sentient and insentient beings as kin.
When in doubt,
Forgive us our myopia
As we forgive those who are myopic against us.
When in doubt,
Unreel your grief to a tree.
When in doubt,
Remember this,
We are all on a
Caucus-race.
There is no start.
No finish.
Everyone wins.
That line about myopia is brilliant. And I also love the reference to Alice in Wonderland at the end.
I greatly enjoyed this book, and am glad to have it in my collection. Also, my kids are the best. Just saying.
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