(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 19, 2015)

Sometimes called the “I-knew-it-all-along” effect, the tendency to see past events as being predictable at the time those events happened.

Today—no question what we would talk about:
L’entrée de Barry Manilow, or as the French say,
Faire son coming out, as if homosexualité

was Americain. You know, like the French
used to say making love in the English way
while the English were saying making love

in the French way. Meanwhile my own closet
of 33 rpms and fan-club letters and all those
barroom assertions. Is he? Isn’t he?

What is the nature of his love? So benevolent
to his fans, surprising them at the piano
of their houses, the spotlight of polite

amid rock and roll infamy. This hindsight
bias is tricky: "At the time." Since when?
Every moment to the now we speak of it.

The was that made the is to be: we will argue this
to our thrones. Like literary ironies of thigh master,
controversial poet of the bedroom farce,

Krissy Snow and her gentle flurry of confession.
Zaftig fans with their quinquagenarian chest pains.
Fantasy is always predictable. It never was.

They are screaming like Beatlemaniacs.
The happy hour question left for us now:
What is the nature of their love?

I said I didn’t like you when I first met you,
Because I didn’t trust the way you moved your hands.
(Your fingers moved too gently and beautifully.)
But one day, when I had to play softball in P.E.,
I kept striking out.
You showed me, with your hands,
How to hold the bat.
Your hands guided mine and showed me what to do.
After that, how could I hate your hands?

My wife doesn’t allow me
to watch her when she cooks.
The dog is her silent admirer,
sitting patiently for crumbs.

So much of it is filled with the
aroma of her mother, Geri’s  cooking,
the recipes etched in memory’s stone,
rituals not shared with a family of men.

The scent of garlic and onions,
meat sizzling in a hundred previous
kitchens for fathers waiting at long tables
makes me regret that I am just a man.

My mother, Elsi was a lousy cook,
and my tias knew it, consigning
her to wrap the twine around
pasteles in their banana leafs.

Where Geri passed down her recipes,
Elsi bequeathed me her heart and
compassion sautéed in bitter-sweet
sorrow dusted with ‘Rican seasoning.

I think she saved a pinch for Krissy,
for succor is her strongest flavor,
and I feed off it ravenously when
I need the strength.

The scent of spaghetti squash
roasting in the oven fills
my imagination with the need
to eat, live beyond just sustenance.

I crave to know the secret of her kitchen
but she brings the squash to me
on a plate hot around the edges
and we eat it, contentedly on the bed.

One day, I will sneak into the cocina
and maybe cook a picadillo finer than
her great creations, doing it
like all men, strictly by the recipe.