My mother was always a better singer
                                than she was a cook.

She may have burnt a lot of things but
                              never missed a note,
         especially when Harry Belafonte
came on the transistor kitchen radio-
a voice so pure it made her cry with joy.

“There’s a hole in the bucket dear Liza,
                                                     dear Liza,”
                         he sang echoing her past,
                                                 the divorce,
                         her humbling present life.

The duet had the reply she wanted to say
to everything and sing it like Odetta--
                             “Well fix it, dear Henry
                                                 dear Henry,
                                                          fix it.”

It was her kitchen cooking song and
           and we would sing it together
            when Harry wasn’t on the air.

We sang it so often,
                                  switching voices.
                                      that I believed
                         she could fix anything
                                     and I could too.    

When we got to the fortieth line
                the meatloaf was burnt
                                              on top.

I ate it all with a lot of ketchup.
She just cut off the burnt part
                and fed it to the dog.

My sister,
                             two brothers
                              and stepdad
                             ate it quietly,
                        building up a lot
                                         of bad
                 meatloaf memories.

All the other kids had
                          their own songs
                that she sang to them
                                but she sang
                                               only
                         Belafonte to me.  

“Daylight come and me wan' go home,”
                    she sang to me in a whisper
                   before kissing me goodnight.

Calypso more than Salsa echoed
                            her Boricua pride,
                 the youngest of thirteen,
            yet never born to the island.

“Midnight come  and she wan’ go home,”
I sang to her open casket 22 years later,
                              kissing her on the head,
                      taking the hole in the bucket,
                                     along with Belafonte
                                                   to the future.