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El Zapato
Not the wooden spoon,
primordial source
of sweetness and pain,
flying across the kitchen —
I barely bothered to duck.
Not my father undoing his belt —
I would be gone before he’d whack
the tabletop in a sample nalgada,
but my mother’s shoe, El Zapato:
its black leather soft as the mouth
of an old, toothless dog, black laces
crisscrossing its long tongue
all the way up, heavy sole and thick
square high heel. Shoe from a special
old lady store, shoe from olden days,
puritanical shoe, bruja shoe, peasant
shoe, Gypsy shoe, shoe for zapateo
on the grave of your enemy, shoe
for dancing the twisted, bent
over dance of los viejitos.
Not the pain, humiliating clunk
of leather striking upside my head,
but her aim, the way I knew that even
if I ran out the kitchen door,
down the back stairs and leapt
the fence, when I glanced over my
shoulder El Zapato, prototype
of the smart bomb, would be there,
its primitive but infallible radar
honed in on my back. Not the shoe
for suicidal anger of come out of hiding
or I’ll throw myself out the window.
Not the shoe for carpet-chewing
Hitler anger — the throwing herself
down, taking an edge of rug
between her teeth anger. But the shoe
for everyday justice she could unlace,
whip off and throw faster than Paladin
draws his gun, shoe that could hunt
me down like the Texas Rangers,
even if it took years, even if she died
while she was throwing her shoe,
even if she managed to throw it
from the ramparts of heaven, the way
she threw it from a third story window
while I stood half a block away, laughing
at her with my friends, thinking,
it could never hit me from this far,
until I stood suddenly alone,
abandoned by my cowardly friends,
alone in the frozen cross-eyed knowledge
that El Zapato, black, smoking with righteousness,
was slowly, inevitably spinning toward my forehead.
— Richard Garcia
For several years Richard Garcia was poet-in-residence at the Long Beach Museum of Art and at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles where he conducted poetry and art workshops for hospitalized children. He has won many awards for his poetry including a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. He currently lives in South Carolina and teaches in the Antioch University MFA program and at the College of Charleston. “El Zapato” is from his collection Rancho Notorious, published by BOA Editions Ltd. © and is reprinted by permission.
Here's something you might be interested in.
El Zapato
El Zapato
Not the wooden spoon,
primordial source
of sweetness and pain,
flying across the kitchen —
I barely bothered to duck.
Not my father undoing his belt —
I would be gone before he’d whack
the tabletop in a sample nalgada,
but my mother’s shoe, El Zapato:
its black leather soft as the mouth
of an old, toothless dog, black laces
crisscrossing its long tongue
all the way up, heavy sole and thick
square high heel. Shoe from a special
old lady store, shoe from olden days,
puritanical shoe, bruja shoe, peasant
shoe, Gypsy shoe, shoe for zapateo
on the grave of your enemy, shoe
for dancing the twisted, bent
over dance of los viejitos.
Not the pain, humiliating clunk
of leather striking upside my head,
but her aim, the way I knew that even
if I ran out the kitchen door,
down the back stairs and leapt
the fence, when I glanced over my
shoulder El Zapato, prototype
of the smart bomb, would be there,
its primitive but infallible radar
honed in on my back. Not the shoe
for suicidal anger of come out of hiding
or I’ll throw myself out the window.
Not the shoe for carpet-chewing
Hitler anger — the throwing herself
down, taking an edge of rug
between her teeth anger. But the shoe
for everyday justice she could unlace,
whip off and throw faster than Paladin
draws his gun, shoe that could hunt
me down like the Texas Rangers,
even if it took years, even if she died
while she was throwing her shoe,
even if she managed to throw it
from the ramparts of heaven, the way
she threw it from a third story window
while I stood half a block away, laughing
at her with my friends, thinking,
it could never hit me from this far,
until I stood suddenly alone,
abandoned by my cowardly friends,
alone in the frozen cross-eyed knowledge
that El Zapato, black, smoking with righteousness,
was slowly, inevitably spinning toward my forehead.
— Richard Garcia
For several years Richard Garcia was poet-in-residence at the Long Beach Museum of Art and at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles where he conducted poetry and art workshops for hospitalized children. He has won many awards for his poetry including a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. He currently lives in South Carolina and teaches in the Antioch University MFA program and at the College of Charleston. “El Zapato” is from his collection Rancho Notorious, published by BOA Editions Ltd. © and is reprinted by permission.
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