Richard Blanco was chosen as the inaugural poet to write the poem for this year's Presidential and Vice Presidential inauguration. Click here to watch him read the poem at the celebration, and enjoy an older poem of his below.
El Florida Room
Not a
study or a den, but El Florida
as my
mother called it, a pretty name
for
the room with the prettiest view
of
the lipstick-red hibiscus puckered up
against
the windows, the tepid breeze
laden
with the brown-sugar scent
of
loquats drifting in from the yard.
Not a
sunroom, but where the sun
both
rose and set, all day the shadows
of
banana trees fan-dancing across
the
floor, and if it rained, it rained
the
loudest, like marbles plunking
across
the roof under constant threat
of
coconuts ready to fall from the sky.
Not a
sitting room, but El Florida
where
I sat
alone for hours with butterflies
frozen
on the polyester curtains
and
faces of Lladró figurines: sad angels,
clowns,
and princesses with eyes glazed
blue
and gray, gazing from behind
the
glass doors of the wall cabinet.
Not a
TV room, but where I watched
Creature Feature as a
boy, clinging
to my
brother, safe from vampires
in
the same sofa where I fell in love
with
Clint Eastwood and my Abuelo
watching
westerns, or pitying women
crying
in telenovelas with my Abuela.
Not a
family room, but the room where
my
father twirled his hair while listening
to
8-tracks of Elvis, and read Nietzsche
and
Kant a few months before he died,
where
my mother learned to dance alone
as
she swept, and I learned Salsa pressed
against
my Tía Julia's enormous breasts.
At
the edge of the city, in the company
of
crickets, beside the empty clothesline,
telephone
wires and the moon, tonight
my
life is an old friend sitting with me
not
in the living room, but in the light
of El Florida, as quiet and necessary
as
any star shining above it.
Courtesy poets.org
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