Oaxaca, Mexico, 1939
Poem: a grandpa’s musings on a mezcal bottle
I imagine my grandfather,
Gómez Montañez,
playing cards with
his friends in the shade
of a Sunday morning
in Oaxaca, Mexico, 1939.
The only food: a mezcal bottle
and a plate of stale bread.
The only music: the song of birds
and the whistling wind.
“You cannot taste mezcal
until you’ve kissed a woman
who has spent the night
drinking it,” says Grandpa.
“Not until you’ve tasted
the smoke of the burning wood
and licked your lips clean.”
Stories pass to us as whispers. This poem was inspired by a passing sentence from a high school classmate that has stuck in my brain, about how her grandpa’s life in Mexico continued as usual even after the start of World War II. (Mexico entered the war in 1942). For the poem, I invented a character based on the words I overheard.
