Last Meal: Breakfast Tacos, San Antonio, Tejas
Breakfast Tacos, from the series Seven Days, 2003, by Chuck Ramirez
Let me be your last meal.
Let me harvest the notes
I took from your mother’s
watery hands, street vendors
in Rome, Ms. Rosie
from our taquería, you:
in the sun, in the open air,
let me give you zucchini
and their elusive blossoms —
my arms, my hands.
Pumpkiny empanadas
of my feet, pulpy as a newborn’s.
Guisada’d loin of my calf
muscle. On a plate white
and crisp as the ocean,
lemoned eyeballs like two
scallops. The red, ripe
plum of my mouth.
Perhaps with coffee,
you’d have the little lobe
of my ear sugared as a wedding
cookie. The skin of my belly,
my best chicharrón, scrambled
with the egg of my brain
for your breakfast tacos.
My lengua like lengua.
Mi pescuezo, el mejor hueso.
Let me be your last meal:
mouthfuls of my never-to-be-digested
face, my immovable femur
caught in your throat
like a fish bone. Let my body be
what could never leave your body.
Copyright Credit: You can read the rest of the PINTURA : PALABRA portfolio in the March 2016 issue of Poetry. All images in this portfolio are courtesy of and with permission from the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Breakfast Tacos, from the series Seven Days by Chuck Ramirez, museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment © 2003, Estate of Charles Ramirez.
Source: Poetry (March 2016)