She was raven-haired with Italian and Arab blood. The blood of immigrants come to a town of bankers, of factories. Of tongues. She could speak some number. Was a secretary, bilingual, in one of the mills. A town of mills.

Mills made me think of Don Quijote. She wrote about them. "Not those kinds of mills." Molinos de viento, no. "Places where one labors." Scary, but one must. A town of toil.  

There was a monkey hanging upside down on a string; on a nail in the threshold. She was a believer, she said. And had written of all the tears, and years unloved. A dying husband. A growing son. But always hopeful.

"Come on over," she wrote. "So you're with your cousins at carnival? Caribbean fun, I know. Come on over. Great postcard!"

I stopped in New York on my way to her. A sort of gig. And read. For drinks, over in the Village. El Café para los Poetas (de Nueva York). I was having a shot of Tequila by the bar and the woman with the baby carriage with a baby in it, who had read one very long and powerful poem, came up and slid a note into my closed hand. I had forgotten you existed. She said nothing and pushed the stroller away and disappeared into the crowd. And I read the note again and again. And sipped the tequila slowly. In the night, a friend took me to listen to a local merengue band in Corona, Queens. I saw Yvonne, Eddie's sister, on the dance floor. I hadn't seen her in years. She was shy but did come over. And we danced. She said she had married. And divorced. I told her I was on my way to a mill town. She knew of my existence. And thought me weird for sending her poems back in junior high.

The town was in Massachusetts. The monkey was made of felt. The bus ride was seven hours. She waited to greet me. We talked about the Dominican carnival. And of her husband's dying; he had passed. The writer you like is in the same cemetery, she said. And we paid tribute to both men. One had inspired me, the other one, a musician, I never met. We recalled how the writer once picked cotton in California. And we agreed I'd have to get a job in one of the mills. Her apartment was very quiet. The landlord lives upstairs, she said. In his room, the son had fishes in a beautifully clean and colorful tank. And she said, You think you can write here? I said I would try. But I had to work and didn't try. I asked about the monkey.

The monkey is holy, she said. We drank wine and did not have sex. She was a true believer. Her son, seven, did not like me. He misses his father, she said. But I won him over in days. An old guitar she had in a closet. I taught him some blues chords. I made up simple lyrics. And he began to forget he missed his father. The father had been a drinker, but he was nice to the boy, she said. Brought home gifts. Though he was rarely home, she said. So the boy missed the gifts. I had nothing to give but words. He was appreciative, strummed the guitar. Blues, I told him. He would remember.

After two months, she said I had to leave. Because after one week she said I had to marry her. It's my religion, she said. You cannot live here with me if you don't marry me. She said it was disrespectful to the monkey. But I knew no one in town. I had not made friends at the mill. Fine, she said. It's all right. You can stay awhile.

It was a giant mill. Tall and imposing. It chewed up leather and spat out pairs of shoes. By the thousands. Trucks took the shoes away. They were the shoes of the bankers. One month after my arrival an incredible thing happened. Too many shoes had been produced. There were just so many shoes the bankers could sell and be sold. So they stopped the mill. Everybody go home! the foremen yelled at us workers. Go home! We'll call you! Too many shoes! The bankers will find a way to sell them! But it'll take a while! We'll let you know! Go home!

When the boy asked me what was I going to do, I said I was going to write down words. And he looked bewildered. He had heard the word "poem," but not "poet."

A poet is an artist, I said. All poets are artists. All artists are poets. "Poet" is a nice word. So is "poem." It means anything good and strange. And if it's strange and bad, the poet, because he is original, will make it good. "Poem" has rhythm. Seems to be going somewhere. The poet goes but never gets there. The poem maybe, but not the poet. The poet is always going, getting, on his way or just arriving. And we may all be poets. Sometimes we know it, sometimes we feel it, sometimes we are. Some of us take it, accept it and go. We go and be poets. We are poets going and on our way.

I did a little dance. He giggled.

Miguel Gardel has had stories in Your Impossible Voice, Star 82 Review, Red Fez and others. He lives in New York.

Read his postcard.

Read more of his work in the archive.

Detail of photo on main page courtesy of Oscar Suarez.





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