Classic and Contemporary Poetry
LA CONDUCTORA DEL DESEO/CONDUIT, by VIRGIL SUAREZ Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: The woman, la conductora, at number 51, corner Subject(s): Hispanic Americans; Women; Latinos | ||||||||
The woman, La conductora, at number 51, corner house, the red door, she with curlers in her hair, everyday she sends the neighborhood kids out to steal eggs, chickens, broken-down furniture for her stove on which she cooks the tamales her husband sells on foot, better known as the woman other neighbors come see about this business of electricity. See, she's the one with the main power lines coming across the street, from the mainlines to a pole which can be reached from her kitchen window. She runs her web of lines all through the neighborhood for a nominal fee, of course, and nobody can snitch on her because she happens to be the president of El comite, which controls mostly everything, and between her power, her cooking, and her husband's corner kiosk, they live, she says, asi vamos viviendo, you make do in this land of necessity, mother of invention, and the house is falling apart brick by brick, panel by panel, and the children bring her lime she dilutes with water in buckets and fills holes, paints every month, specially during the months of storms, these down- pours that wash everything through the cobble streets to the river, then out to the sea, which she can look out from her makeshift balcony where she dries clothes, fish, smokes meat, from here she keeps her eyes open for Yankee invasion, at night, she says she comes out to smoke her cigars and look out beyond the bay's buoys and beacons at the horizon, watches for battleships, planes, anything suspicious, and everyday she spots them, the people on rafts, leaving, waving goodbye, and she doesn't believe it, how often they go away never to come back, and she Keeps her mouth shut because anybody crazy enough to get on an inner tube or a shambled raft deserves a chance to make it, maybe not, and when they dip into the horizon, she closes her eyes and spits on the ground, the cigar embitters her saliva, and she utters a prayer under her breath, a litany of words that run out of her like the electricity she harvests, these currents coming in, coming through, going out. Copyright © Virgil Suarez. http://www.wlu.edu/~shenando | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ARTHUR BRYANT'S, KANSAS CITY, MO- OR, CUBAN POET GORGES HIMSELF.... by VIRGIL SUAREZ COCA-COLA AND COCO FRIO by MARTIN ESPADA FEDERICO'S GHOST by MARTIN ESPADA FROM AN ISLAND YOU CANNOT NAME by MARTIN ESPADA JORGE THE CHURCH JANITOR FINALLY QUITS by MARTIN ESPADA LA TUMBA DE BUENAVENTURA ROIG by MARTIN ESPADA MANUEL IS QUIET SOMETIMES by MARTIN ESPADA SUSSEX DRINKING SONG by HILAIRE BELLOC THE COMPLAINT OF CHAUCER TO HIS EMPTY PURSE by GEOFFREY CHAUCER |
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