Brooklyn Bridge Park

You can see the undersides of both bridges. The Manhattan Bridge and the Brooklyn Bridge are twin structures, one blue and one brown, stretching across the water toward Manhattan. The bridges form a triangle around the park; a field of grass and you are the center. You can hear the rumble of traffic and trains, the quiet lapping of water where the grass ends and slopes down to the East River. On the few yards of rocky shore, children hunt for stones to hurl across the water, in the direction of Manhattan.

On the Fourth of July, there are fireworks. You can watch the fireworks burst over the water and beyond the silhouettes of both bridges. You can run over the endless grass, under the open sky. There is only one tree in the whole field, but its branches so expansive, you can play under it for hours, climbing and shouting, convinced you have found a forest that is thriving in secret at the edge of Brooklyn. 

This prose poem was originally published by The Fordham Observer in December 2010. View the original piece here.

aguapanela

Photo Credit: "La Aguapanela"article from Semana.com on 24.6.06

Make aguapanela for someone you love. Lower a brick of sugar into the pot, turn up the flame, and let the water boil until it is black. Stir and taste; be sure that it remains sweet. When it's not too rich, but still strong, add milk and let it warm. Cut cheese, soft and white, queso de hoja or mozzarella, if you're making it in this country.

Serve two cups and you drink first. Let the cheese sink to the bottom and soak until it is the color of amber, and melting. He should save you the last few drops and say Mmm before he hands you his cup.

Ask him what it's good for and he'll say, “Hunger, remembering – hasta para curar enfermedades.”

It is like the guarapo you drank as a child from Styrofoam cups on a polluted beach in Orlando where you tried to invoke enough Spanish to say thank you and Que Dios te bendiga to everyone you met: your grandfather, your cousins, and strangers, like the man who cut the stalk and stripped back the flesh, lowered it into a machine so you could eat.

Aguapanela is the color of your skin in the sun. He will taste the sucrose and fructose, the caña on your tongue, after.  This will remind you of home. Save what is left for tomorrow. 

In two years, you will meet his grandmother. On a rainy night in Bogotá, she will make aguapanela for you, and say: This is what love is like. Seeping the panela in water and letting it dissolve. She will instruct you to drink from the pot with your hands. It is sweet, and it burns. 

- NC, prose poem on a whim, March 10, 2010