Willy

poem - 2013

The first thing you notice when you walk into

Greek Taverna is how clean the restrooms are.

Bite-sized, ivory tiles stretch across

the walls and the floors,

and the dirt between each one

has been scrubbed to oblivion.

On rainy afternoons,

when the plates would sit patiently for hours,

you would always find me snoring on a barstool.

Willy would wipe the moco from the spoons.

A pruned, brown thumb beneath a linen cloth

to smear crumbs from the silver face

He would see himself:

a boomerang mustache,

twirling beneath kitchen lights only for a time,

gathering just enough air beneath his feet

to curve back to the wrists that

he calls home: Mexico.

Where the women have faith in the curve of the wind, the art of return,

where toddlers' feet twist beneath bald-eagle piñata,

and sons and daughters reach for dulcitos

whose names they can barely pronounce.

“Willy!

Grab the plates, place the forks,

run the food, hurry up!”

Endlessly whipped by sandstorm tongues,

and yet he'd just brush off his whiskers and keep spinning.

Willy had built a home out of food trays.

He held up two roofs with

his hands beneath a saucer,

and his heart across a border.

Have you ever seen a grown man dance

a bolero with a broomstick?

You'd be surprised how much a mop can

arch like a woman's back beneath a foreign sky.

Nothing would hush the whirlwind in his stride.

His trajectory was as fixed as the iron bars meant to

scare his documents into place.

Willy,

you annoyed the shit out of me.

Whenever I would stop to catch a breath

you would yell at me, tell me that I should be moving.

I called you an asshole.

Told you that this was just a part time job,

and boasted about the college that would catch me with eager fingers.

You told me once that I didn't know the meaning of momentum,

I told you that the dustpan wasn't going anywhere.

In the mornings Willy would spend hours scrubbing the bathrooms,

He tried to teach me once in front of the mirror.

<<Coje un cepillo y lavalos bien, papi>>

The brush is right below the sink.

<<Muévelo para arriba y para abajo, y después, enjuágate la boca >>

Make sure to get all the food out, make it smell nice.

<< Fíjate en lo que yo hago, mijo, porque un día, yo no estaré aquí>>

Pay attention to what I'm doing, because one day, I'm not going to be here.

It's been a few years.

I'm the only mustache in the restaurant now.

The dustpan hasn't gone anywhere, and neither have I.

I miss Willy

whenever I'm cleaning the tiles,

the tiny ones,

the ivory ones,

the little crooked ones

that look so much like baby teeth,

and I try to remember what he taught me.