Read More: A brief Q&A with Robert René Galván
Old Photographs
1924
Papá sits on a wooden stool
in front of the house on Rehmann Street,
bedecked in his Easter best, pouts under
a white derby while his real sister, Alicia,
is all smiles with her basket,
his hermana querida who would drop dead
at the dinner table at the age of sixteen,
the younger brother who would one day
betray him, not yet born into that house
of my grandmother’s shadows.
By providence and the force
of his intellect he would transcend
that gravel road, from barefooted
paperboy to honored professor,
from soldier to poet, from the crooked
tracks of the barrio to London and back,
then to New Orleans and then to a junior
college surrounded by transplanted palms
in that dusty place where he would marry
the most beautiful woman in town.
1942
Mamá wears a smile
brighter than the California sun.
Seated with siblings and cousins
on the flatbed of her father’s truck,
she seems thrilled by the adventure:
The family crossed the desert
from South Tejas to pick sugar beets
and grapes.
Her older sister sits at the far left
against the wooden railing,
her measured smile, the same
one she offered all her life,
an expression of bemusement
and curiosity.
Her older brother broods on the far right,
his serious brow under a fedora,
arm protectively around his little cousin,
scans the vista like an alpha meerkat;
he had his mother’s mocha skin
and saturnine eyes,
my mother, her father’s fair
and generous face, a trace that lives
in her own seven children.
Welcoming Committee
My childhood home still stands
on what was once the edge of town
atop a hill of rocky soil,
framed by scrubby oaks
and a pecan tree that my mother
nursed in a coffee can.
The lot lay just beyond the cemetery,
and when my father saw a For Sale sign posted,
he was excited because he had been living
in a duplex on Haines Street near the river
with a wife and five children.
The day “Prieto” entered the realtor’s office,
the plot became suddenly unavailable,
so he asked his friend Michael,
to purchase the land, and, indeed,
it was still available, and the two pulled
a fast one on the salesman, and soon
the architect posted a large sign
which read: This home being built
by Bill Milburn for Dr. Roberto Galván
and his family, so then the chuchumeca from around
the corner, who fancied herself a local celebrity,
went door to door with
a there-goes-the-neighborhood
petition, but to no avail;
for years I saw her face shrivel
into a dry riverbed, each fissure,
a tributary of bitterness.
Borders
Just as our pigment
was a barrier,
so was my father’s education,
and we lived in the shadow
between two trees.
For many years,
we were the only dark faces
in the neighborhood,
embraced by some,
shunned by others,
So far from the Eastside,
but near the university
where the hills began,
on the other side
of the tracks far from
the river.
Sometimes Dad would
drive to the barrio,
to a bodega that reminded
him of his mother’s tienda.
An aloe vera plant was nailed
above the doorway
and had survived
for many years
without soil, or water,
and they carried Hippo Soda
which he had enjoyed as a boy,
and pan dulce. […]
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Mestiza
I gaze at my daughter’s
graceful hands,
her olive skin
and amber eyes
which had been blue
until her third year,
her Nordic jaw
and indigenous
cheekbones,
the hybrid nose
and chestnut hair:
amalgam of our
two seeds –
in some cultures,
an abomination,
but the arc
of humanity
in her smile;
in the future
the whole world
will look like her
and wonder
what all the fuss
was about,
and finally
be kind
to one
another.
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Robert René Galván, born in San Antonio, resides in New York City where he works as a professional musician and poet. His collections of poems are Meteors, published by Lux Nova Press and Undesirable: Race and Remembrance, Somos en Escrito Foundation Press. His poetry was recently featured in Adelaide Literary Magazine, Azahares Literary Magazine, Gyroscope, Hawaii Review, Hispanic Culture Review, Newtown Review, Panoply, Prachya Review, Sequestrum, Shoreline of Infinity, Somos en Escrito, Stillwater Review, West Texas Literary Review, and the Winter 2018 issue of UU World. He is a Shortlist Winner Nominee in the 2018 Adelaide Literary Award for Best Poem. Recently, his poems are featured in Puro ChicanX Writers of the 21st Century and in Yellow Medicine Review: A Journal of Indigenous Literature, Art and Thought. His forthcoming books of poetry are Undesirable: Race and Remembrance, Somos en Escrito Foundation Press, The Shadow of Time, Adelaide Books and Standing Stones, Finishing Line Press. His poems have been nominated for Best of Web and the Pushcart Prize. His poem, Awakening, was featured in the author’s voice on NPR as part of National Poetry Month in the Spring of 2021.
Read More: A brief Q&A with Robert René Galván