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.
