Eduardo Ortiz Moreno essay #4 · a day ago

On PATRICK ROSAL´s “UPTOWN ODE THAT ENDS ON AN ODE TO THE MACHETE”

MESOSTIC ODE TO THE MACHETE

That’s an ancestral rite to hail any yellow or gyPsy

stop on frAnklin and Lincoln ,

To fly us

oveR

the brIdge then zip up the east side where the jumps are

the danCe floor or post up at the bar sipping on , or

a corny cáscara with a liKe

i’m tito puente but i have no clue i Really am

a gremlin dragging its tailpipe the length Of 119th, which

iS

to sAy.

it don’t

take Long for willie and me to

boom- braddah macumba candombe bámbula, this Puerto

ricAn leans

over and says To me

Real slow,

“everybody Is trying to get home.” and i’m like, “aw

because it is

not midnight and Will is dropping science liKe that. allow me to

tRanslate: there are neighborhoods

in america where a man says One

Simple sentence

And out

fLow the first seventeen discrete meanings of

ocean, if your own weePing doesn’t split you

down into equAl

monsoon, say, and gossip, if you can’T

stand at the fRont door of

an ancestral house and see a black saInt staring down at you, no name, no if

your story must have a whole other set of seCrets. you

must Know what it’s

like to if someone is even waiting you to Return.

yOur IDEA

of home might not contain ways to call blood couSins from

Another time zone or just

shout from the middle or

the smiths who craft knives from hilt to tiP, who

cook blAdes

That

split the wood oR carve the

rInd

from flesh. i onCe went to visit the men

who maKe the machetes of

the philippines. theRe was a time, i didn’t care

where knives came frOm, how the men

and women Stoked the

embers And dropped their

maLlets with a millimeter’s

Precision. when

i wAs young,

i Thought

haRd who was the mad-dog you could

send across a crowded bar. I thought hard how was

or how you bring. in some neighborhoods of ameriCa,

is down the fire just enough, so you could Kiss

the knife and make it Ring.

what happens when me and willie run intO each other on a night in brooklyn? He ? we ?

not really a queStion.

thAt’s an

ancestraL imperative: to hail any yellow or gypsy on an ode.

EDUARDO ORTIZ MORENO