Memoria

Poems

Orlando Ricardo Menes

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780807170632
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Born to Cuban parents in Lima, Perú, raised in Miami among political exiles, and having spent two years in Francoist Spain, Orlando Ricardo Menes pays tribute to the resilience and tradition that shape Hispanic culture across the globe while critiquing the hypermasculine characteristics embedded within. Ripe with pride and shame, beauty and aversion, Memoria relays the personal path one takes while navigating the complexities of heritage. Throughout his life, the ever-present concept of machismo has created turmoil and grief for Menes, who aligns his sensibilities with a more compassionate expression of masculinity. In poems about the Franco dictatorship and the Spanish Civil War, Menes assails the fascists' preoccupation with violence and domination as tokens of manliness. Meditations on the music of Menes's youth also underscore a young man's desire for alternative versions of manhood. Alice Cooper and Lou Reed offer examples of self-liberation from the repressive regime: "Cropped head, whitewashed face, O Lou, our goth-butch apostle / In skintight leather pants, eagle's-head buckle on a rhinestone belt... Our mothers horrified to have borne sons so twisted, so perverse, / Their mop sticks primed to beat us into Marlboro Men." Menes balances these unflinching criticisms with celebratory lines for España as a mother country: "We... sailed in silence on the asphalt currents / to Madrid's Puerta del Sol, our little car / gliding like a caravel to this Gate of the Sun, / Spain's navel, point zero, her alpha and omega, / where the empire was born and died, / where every road and every life begins and ends." Menes's honest embrace of his heritage includes fond remembrance of his mother, "we talked about your house in / Havana, so close to the bay your young eyes winced / in salt air, " and sincere expressions of cultural reckoning, "Nations die but blood lives forever in la memoria, / So pray to your Abuelo as you would God Himself / Who made earth, sky, and water from the void." At once rich with sensorial memories and rife with conflicts of identity, Memoria expands representations of Hispanic culture while drawing on universal themes of love, belonging, and rebellion.

 

Stones #1

 

Most discos played ABBA and the Bee Gees

for Francoist youth to dance in their Sunday best,

but Stones #1 was our cathedral of rock and roll,

be it acid, hard, psychedelic, boogie, or proto-punk—

 

strobes high in the nave, velvet icons of Hendrix and Morrison

on paneled walls, tabernacled Les Pauls and Stratocasters,

a purple-lit pulpit decaled with Jagger’s lips and tongue

from which English DJs spun the latest 45s and LPs.

 

Every Friday night misfit kids like me would flock

through her steel doors buzzed on beer and wine

from the dingy bars around La Latina to stomp, bang,

scrunch to Black Sabbath, Slade, Led Zeppelin.

 

Boys who shred air guitars wore military boots,

the howlers snakeskin platforms like Bowie’s Ziggy.

I was more bohemian with my Indian tunic,

stiff Wranglers, square-tipped boots, and I tended to move

with soul, Motown style, which made no sense.

 

Girls preferred wool miniskirts with silk blouses

but not the one we called Bennie (from Elton’s song)

because she always wore black leather pants,

silver platform boots, and a tight red turtleneck—

her pageboy hair-sprayed stiff as a helmet.

 

Bennie never talked, never smiled, danced alone

with stern cat eyes, spangled lips. One time

when the speakers boomed “Smoke on the Water,”

Bennie pulled three boys to the middle

of the floor, and I followed, some girls too,

 

then we drifted into a circle, sweaty, out of breath,

hopping and hoofing to the drumbeat,

howling to the squeals of lead guitar, our arms

flailing as we swayed, throbbed to organ waves—

free O so free like jellyfish in a Devonian sea.

 

St. Stanislaus Kostka School

Our campus neither dour nor majestic like Philip II’s Escorial (a short ride away on that

Treeless plateau of rabbits, crows, Civil War shrapnel) but cold in a corporate

Way—dull steel, drab glass, dun concrete, quick to pit, crumble, unlike granite,

Imperial stone. My classmates were sons of generals and grandees with gilded

Lineages, boys who killed time at country clubs in their pressed Lacoste Polos,

Button-fly Levis, penny (peseta!) loafers, chain-smoking Winstons or Marlboros

Down to the sludgy filter, clicked aflame with lacquered lighters from Germany.

Cepero and I were the only stateside Cubans, his parents Freedom Flight refugees

Working two factory jobs each to send him abroad so he’d stay away from gangs

In the Bronx, my own father, store owner in hock, who hid when the creditors rang.

Papá took out collateral loans to pay my tuition, showed me off to his friends as a star

Pupil when in fact I got poor grades, F...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Kissing in Madrid
• Photo Booth
• Macho
• Sharing a Meal with the Cuban Ex-Political Prisoners
• Camp
• Matador
• My Father’s Pantry
• Judo
• The Man with No Name
• Doctor Lu
• Pirates World
• Rock ’n’ Roll Animal
• Radio Luxembourg
• Tarkus
• Stones #1
• St. Stanislaus Kostka School
• El Rastro
• Autostop
• Mr. Cossio, My Ninth-Grade English Teacher
• Talking to Lou Reed: A Boy’s Homage
• Blood
• Cervecería Alemana
• I Give You Alabanzas, Madrid
• Rasp, Spoon, and Pestle
• Castizo
• Ars Poetica
• Heritage
• My Grandfather the Policeman Takes the Insane to the Asylum
• Turrón
• Sietemesino
• In Memoriam
• Tortilla Española
• Pepe of Plaza Santana
• Good Friday in Madrid
• Fuego
• Letter to the Generalissimo
• The Day Admiral Carrero Blanco Died
• Madrid in the Civil War
• An American Nurse at the Battle of Teruel
• Federico García Lorca
• Valley of the Fallen
• Acknowledgments
• Notes