Bilingual Blues
Soy un ajiaco de contradicciones.
I have mixed feelings about everything.
Name your tema, I’ll hedge;
name your cerca, I’ll straddle it
like a Cubano.
I have mixed feeling about everything.
So un ajiaco de contradicciones.
Vexed, hexed, complexed,
hyphenated, oxygenated, illegally alienated,
psycho soy, cantando voy:
You sat tomato,
I say tu madre;
You say potato,
I say Pototo,
Let’s call the hole
un hueco, the thing
a cosa, and if the cosa goes into the hueco,
consider yourself en casa,
consider yourself part of the family.
Soy un de contradicciones,
un pure de impurezas:
a little square from Rubik’s Cuba
que nadie nunca acoplara.
(Cha-cha-cha.)
by Gustavo Pérez Firmat
from Paper Dance- 55 Latino Poets
Persea Books