Premiere Generation Ink.


Mercado--Madrid, 1972

Deep under the city, pass beggars
and their dirty children, pass the blind
loteria vendor with clouds for eyes-
deeper still, the market: all the fruit,
vegetables, tubers, legumbres, cold
cuts, and shops, all you-can-eat
for pesetas. Carcasses of rabbits
and goats upside down like shirts
dangled to dry on clotheslines,
the lure of mussels and clams, the pink
of shaved pigskin, feet and offal,
rainbow shimmer of light against
the mackerel, sardine, and smelt
scales, scales like confetti speckled
on the wet black floors. Bonbons
made at the chocolate shops,
liqueur filled, the smell of dried cod,
Serrano ham hung from the rafters,
everywhere wine, grapes, shiny olives...
Tight, my mother holds my hand
as we walk through and though we
don't have much to spend, every few
shops or so she says, See all that?
That's abundance, freedom. This
is why we left Cuba. A fruit vendor
hands me a shiny apple. I bite into
it, taste its juices, this world
of sweetness for the first time;
who can forget the price of freedom?


Virgil Suarez

This poem appears in the Poetry Journal
Premiere Generation Ink. Volume 2 Number 1


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