Miguel Barretto Garcia

March 31, 2024

“Exodus 15:21” by Miguel Barretto GarciaPosted by

Miguel Barretto Garcia

EXODUS 15:21

There are pages of home
work left open on the table.
The way there are plenty
of leftovers in the fridge.
Here I am left on the fringes.
 
This desolate place I call
home. The TV at some point
started to hiss. No more reality
show kissing scenes. No more
breaking news. Reality is white
 
noise with a white dress dancing
to a Poltergeist. Kitchen cabinets
stocked with bottles of
prescriptions. White tablets
of antacids for upset stomachs.
 
Light blue sertraline pills
for the nerves. In the morning
I break the fast. All I know
that something is broken:
The yellow bus no longer passes by
 
my street. My teacher keeps
calling our landline but my mother
is wearing thick black headphones,
cancelling all her appointments
including motherhood.
 
I crack the egg and whisk it
until my mother stops breaking down.
I learned how to change the oil
of our car, but I’m still figuring
the ways to keep the ballerina figurines
 
from falling onto the hardwood floor.
Our house leaves no secrets
and our house has plenty of them.
All of them demons in the freezer
waiting for the day the social
 
worker knocks on our door
and takes me to another version
of hell. I do have faith
in our Protective Services just as I
have faith in the God
 
Moses prayed to. The last
time I was in Sunday School
the needle screeched on the turntable
and the living room was the sound
of old ‘50s Hollywood. My father
 
used to be a happy man. My father
used to be alive. When he checked
out from this world, I checked out
the cold silence of my mother’s bed.
Death sleeps beside my mother
 
the way a child clings to their mother
to the sound of thunder.
My mother is the child. Nothing
in our textbooks prepared me
to mother my mother.
 
Nothing is the mother
I bring close to my milkless bosom.
Here, I sing to the Lord America’s
requiem. Here, I hold her close as if
we were no longer the parted sea.
 

—from Poets Respond
March 31, 2024

__________

Miguel Barretto Garcia: “I wrote this poem as a form of response to the problem of chronic absenteeism in US schools. Currently, the student absences have only exacerbated since the pandemic. I feel like there is more to the story. The pandemic not only affected children’s relationship with schools, but it has also affected the way families have to navigate through the frictions in the workforce. Post-pandemic, parents also suffer from anxieties and work-related imposter’s syndrome in ways that are similar or even more concerning. In several cases, it’s the children that end up buffering the internal struggles that parents have to deal with, and in some instances, they end up stepping up to the role of parent, and consequently foregoing their education. This is a dimension of post-pandemic life that I wanted to explore through this poem.”

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March 14, 2021

“Grandpa’s Mixtape” by Miguel Barretto GarciaPosted by

Miguel Barretto Garcia

GRANDPA’S MIXTAPE

The yellow wood of a No. 2 pencil
found its way into the round mouth

and small tooth of the cassette tape,
rewinding magnetic memory back

to Side A. The radio cassette player’s
mouth was hungry of forgetting, that

it was about to bury the recording with
the newest song played by the local

FM station. The recording began with
a breath, out from the sill of the lips

and into the reel, a message saddling
on silk magnet. The unmistakable

sound of an empty room, disturbed
only by a cough or the clearing of

a throat. The rain outside the room
trickled into white noise, and out of

the sonar mist was a testing, testing,
one, two, three, testing coming out

of nowhere, the amorphous sound
rising from the silhouette of tape,

forming into the shape of my grandpa,
his distinct baritone voice, walking

from the corner of my eye to the center
of the living room. He sat there, leaning

his head towards the cassette recorder.
I could only imagine who grandpa was

imagining singing to. Was it grandma
or his future kids, or grandkids? My

grandpa was singing the album of
his life, the kind of Greatest Hits that

no one else has a copy, but me, as if
the word singular could mean special,

as if secret is I have you to myself, myself
alone. Air inside the room was a thick

magnetic force, reeling my body into
the smallness of my childhood, wide-

eyed and wondered. My grandpa
was large in my imagination, but he

walked me through each question with
curiosity, that he was himself a child

recording the world through every
wrinkle and liver spot. If there was

a way for a pencil to spool my grandpa
back into a present. If I could turn

the cassette far and fast enough, time
travel would unravel, and my grandpa

would be doing his number live. But
that is not the sort of physics we live in

this world. We only have the time we
have, and space? Thousands of cassette

tapes filling dozens of boxes, waiting,
the body defying its physics through

memory. Each plastic and magnet:
a muscle, an organ, a touch, a hand

running through my hair, a kiss
on my forehead, a hand holding my

hand, and I have thousands of them,
versions of my grandfather as tracks

of Sides A and B that would outlast
me. I lean my ears closer to the owl-like

cassette player eyes and hear grandpa
speak, sing, his steps walking towards

the window, watching the rain water
the backyard. The recorder found its way

close to his chest: a planet hidden among
light years and bright stars, heart beat

transmitting a message into the future.
Nat King Cole was on the background

playing You’re My Everything, while my
grandpa’s baritone voice is a fine strand of

hair swaying on my arms, as if the living
room was a mixtape played on repeat.

—from Poets Respond
March 14, 2021

__________

Miguel Barretto Garcia: “Indeed, Lou Ottens was the father of mixtapes. Among the memories I had fiddling with the cassette tape are the recordings I shared with my grandfather. He was a beautiful singer, and he continues to live in those mixtapes, and I thank Lou for making my grandpa live in memory.” (web)

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July 14, 2020

“Stamp Collection” by Miguel Barretto GarciaPosted by

Miguel Barretto Garcia

STAMP COLLECTION

I dream to stamp collect.
I lick the back of every stamp

like Mama kissing her lucky
charm, while raising my arms

in surrender, like the back of
a stamp had a tongue from

a gun licking it. I taste salt
wetting behind the back of

my neck, on the day I face
God on the other side of

the looking glass. The Consular
Officer is a God who holds

my fate. They hold my future
like a stamp collector would

inspect my stamp for every
detail and blemish, like my

past body defumigated for
lice at the border in Juárez,

like my body in the future will
be stripped by the TSA Officer

upon arrival at JFK. I stand
before my random God to

read my verdict, hoping for
my stamp to grant me passage

like the coin on my mouth
while I pass through the Rio

Grande, hoping I have enough
stamps for a dress to my love

letter and future self. I hope.
My stamp is a little bottle of

hope floating on an unknown
Atlantic. My body is floating

behind the looking glass.
The Consular Officer looked

at my face like a city fading
back into ash. I look back

at the Arrival Gate behind
me, hoping my present body

won’t loosen into a column
of salt. My stamp collection

is found on every page of my
passport. My stamp is a child

floating along my Little Nile,
dreaming of stamping my feet

on Harvard ground, dreaming
of stamps on my diploma.

I look back to lick the back
of the stamp like a kiss from

a child to their mother. My
Mama also had dreams like me,

but instead of stamps, Mama
collected visa fees in her bottle.

—from Poets Respond
July 14, 2020

__________

Miguel Barretto Garcia: “As an international student, it was depressing to hear ICE’s announcement of clipping F-1 and M-1 student visas on international students if their universities would decide to hold only online classes. More than a million students, mostly from developing countries, worked hard in their home countries to have a shot of, not necessarily the American Dream, but a life where they can fully realize their potentials and possibilities. Among those possibilities is researching and developing vaccines to treat COVID-19.”

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