that’s what you get
Sheila Maldonado presents excerpts from her new collection of poetry
Coney Island, Brooklyn, NY, July 2017. Photo: Sheila Maldonado
From that’s what you get (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2021) by Sheila Maldonado
Ma’s Palm Sunday TV (María vs. Nuestra Belleza Latina)
All the baby boys in Bethlehem slaughtered
Mary and Joseph getting away with baby Jesus on a donkey
Flip
Beauties in spokesmodel competition brutalizing banter
making asses of themselves
Flip
Jesus all grown already turning water to wine
proud Mama Mary looking on
Flip
Contestants as future video whores winding their bodies
around Daddy Yankee
Flip
Joseph near death after fainting on a carpentry job
Our Lady at his bedside
Flip
Our non-virgins as actresses dying onstage
saviorless
Flip
Salome writhing before Herod
and rewarded with whatsoever she desires
her mother telling her to ask for John the Baptist's head
Mary Magdalene running out screaming Noooo
Flip
Aflac commercial
The duck is in the hospital
Flip
Same commercial
Flip
A belleza standing before the judges
made to address her nude Twitter pix
I did not consent that is my private life
it does not affect my dignity as a woman
Flip
Mary Magdalene bent before a circle of men with rocks in hand
Jesus stepping in with his line about sin and the first stone
meeting for worship (the night Björk DJ'ed in BK)
for GH
My lady the muse
who makes sun rays
of strobe lights
attracts
an overlooked demographic
Quakers of Central American descent
I came late
to get into her very exclusive set
line wrapping up the block
for a tiny club
but it turned out
I had people there
A high school mate
the tenth one
from the door
We were not close
but were kindred long ago
in a Quaker day school
She Guatemalan
Me Honduran
outliers in a Caribbean borough
therefore
fans of
Icelandic dance queens
_______
Our muse
is a shaman witch
from a land
of no singing
banned by
Danish conquerors
why she chant-sings
almost spoken word
in her delivery
on line
my new old Friend
told me Guatemala
was a land of no dancing
frowned upon
like Footloose
frowning
the remnants
of conquest
_______
We showed up for
our sister representative of volcanos
of shaky ground like our sliver
of arts erased by conquerors
apocalypses
the weather
there to praise
and tremble
before her
erupt
reduce to rubble
remake
all we have is our devotion
how we earn our spots
on the floor
identify
who is from a silence
and explode
Easter Coney (late '80s)
after Christ is risen
the flock moves to the rides seaside
dressed in their resurrection best
white engineer overalls and caps
with pink and blue pinstripes
ruffles on socks and pastel leather
tilt-a-whirl blurring
a chill sets in on a candy cloud
our lord joins the fashion masses
for technicolor sunset
the safety bar comes down
he holds on in cold neon
screaming on the breezes
he the fish he the lamb on the rabbit isle
Easter conejo
Conyne Eylandt
Koni Ailan
Easter Island
mutable man on mutable land
celebrating with his outlaw peoples
in their ketchuped slacks
sand scuffing shoe shine
delirious machines spitting
above oily wooden slats
before the grimy water
in front of the Himalaya
the lamb comes down for his crown
sliding outside the ride
to the selector of the spinning chairs
the fish clutches his cap
gets slippery
POET’S NOTE
In that’s what you get, I think of the poems that have to do with belief as syncretic, as imagined ideas of belief.
Of “Ma’s Palm Sunday TV (María vs. Nuestra Belleza Latina),” poet-presbyter Spencer Reece writes for an upcoming piece in American Poetry Review:
[The poem] shows the speaker’s Honduran mother in the comfy diorama of her Coney Island apartment attached to her TV clicker. The story of Jesus mixes with a Latin beauty pageant as her mother flips between the two...We watch the poet watch the mother. On the TV, the Bible story shows innocent children threatening an insecure dictator. A family fleeing authority. Then we cut to the mother watching women being objectified. This seemingly light pastiche will echo larger themes in this book: a disenchanted Catholic upbringing; modern American politics as the Three Kings’ story bears an uncanny mirror to scenarios that occurred under the Trump administration. What can she conjure to counter church, government and misogyny?
In "meeting for worship," I'm mixing Björk and Central America and Quaker ideas. “Meeting for worship” is the name for the silent meeting that is a kind of mass in Quaker belief. I used to love that meeting in high school; it was the first time I sat in silence like that, an introduction to meditation. No one would speak unless they were moved; in the poem, it is about meeting with a Central American friend to get into a Björk performance. Björk represents something that I am, for she is a—not the, but a—definition of Iceland, a place that has had little definition in the mainstream. Her music and presence have helped to define her homeland. She is actually born and raised there, though, unlike me; I was born in Brooklyn to Honduran parents. Being a fan of hers, I have learned a ton about Iceland, how her music is connected to the land, how her style of singing has to do with the sound of Icelandic music, which is very chant-like. I specifically say “spoken word” in the poem, because singing outright was once banned by the Danish, the conquerors of Iceland, for a long time. Iceland was a kind of colony; I think of Honduras as a de facto US colony (it was a Spanish colony, of course). I relate to Björk as a kind of colonial subject who is seeking to redefine that existence.
In "Easter Coney (late ‘80s)," I'm dealing with a day that I always found fascinating in Coney Island: watching everyone in their Easter best come to Coney to get on the rides. Easter was like a cold celebration, a cold carnival. In the poem, even Christ comes to Coney to get in on the resurrection fun. He gets on the rides and dances outside the Himalaya, this ride where people would hang out because the music blasted from the ride’s speakers was as good as any club’s. Coney is already a mix of all the people of New York, attracts everyone, but for sure the crowd at the Himalaya was often more Black, I would say West Indian, Caribbean. A lot of dancehall reggae and hip hop playing on that ride. So Christ goes to the Himalaya because he hangs with the people, and he knows where the party’s at. Ain't no party like a resurrection party. In the poem, Coney is a "mutable land" and Christ is a "mutable man." He has been reshaped by many groups. I do think of all the Caribbean people I grew up with who were Christian but also practiced African-based and syncretic beliefs, from Vodou and Palo and Lukumí to Orisha and Candomblé. They transform all the saints. That is all to say that Christ can appear in New York, in another guise. In the poem, he is someone dressed to celebrate, someone who was risen in order to get down on the dance floor, on a street outside a ride. That can happen in Coney, the mutable land, open to all of this city, but especially to the working class, to those who are beat down and want to forget hardship. Coney is an amusement, a carnival state, where a person can shift or transform.
Coney is a place of transformation and joy, my real homeland.
Here’s a fun fact: Honduras in Spanish means “depths,” which is relevant here, where the profound reveals itself on the poems’ surfaces, vibrating with sonic and electric currents. Maldonado thrills with the contradictions in New York City life, where the people, in mourning over another victim of police brutality, can take over a plaza named to honor a colonizer; where the laundromat offers communion and the subway a site for Emersonian contemplation; where laying on your couch very well may be the ultimate act of resistance; where you could be a Central American Quaker in a Caribbean borough grooving to an Icelandic dance queen’s DJing. Spunk, grit, the real deal, that’s what you get here.
—Mónica de la Torre, author of Repetition Nineteen (Nightboat Books, 2020) and senior editor of BOMB Magazine
