Songs

The Mexican poet Martin Agonía was born in 1969 in Ecatepec de Morelos, in the State of Mexico. He has been living in Toronto for 10 years. His past experiences and his experiences as an immigrant have shaped his literary work, which is marked by social critique and a blunt description of the reality of many foreigners living in one of the most developed cities in the world. His writings have been published in the anthology Iguana, escribir el exilio (White Dwarf, 2007) and in his poetry collection La Tolvanera (2012).

Mama used to make us
special meals
on the weekends.

What my father liked best:
fresh cooked beans,
grilled nopal and grilled steak…
tortillas made by hand.

Beer, lots of beer.
Compadres, Coca Cola,
dogs barking,
a lot of songs.

Songs, always
the same songs:

“Woman, if my sin is to adore you
and if in the sin itself
lies my punishment…
why is it that as much as I struggle
I cannot get you out of my mind
even for a moment?”

Mama also seemed different
on the weekends.
She didn’t sing in those days.
Papa did, always the same songs:

“Like wild laughter that turns to weeping,
as if with their crying they laughed at me,
the greatest sorrow that I feel
is to recall having been that way…”

In the middle of the table was the molcajete with its tejolote.*
Mama used to make a red salsa,
not too spicy, so that her kids
could sprinkle it on the cactus and the steak.

My mama wouldn’t sing on the weekends,
she seemed different.

“My sin and my guilt shall be
to know the pain too well…
For the sorrows and disappointments
that your love has given me for so long.”

My mother was a very good singer,
But she didn’t sing in those days.
I don’t know whether she still sings now
or whether she still has the habit
of putting out a molcajete with salsa
on the weekends.

*molcajete and tejolote: a small mortar and pestle used traditionally in Mexican cooking to grind condiments. From the Nahuatl words molcaxitl and texolotl.

Translated by Martin Boyd