National Poetry Month: Ariana Brown

Lessons from My Family

after Meghan Malachi

Show up to someone’s moving day with tacos. No other greeting is needed. Spanish is the language for jokes and serious conversation. Clean your house with bleach—it’s cheap and effective. Don’t forget the baseboards. Fabuloso is just for scent. It’s not a disinfectant. A woman should wear heels when possible. Men don’t know how to cry or be sorry. Don’t hold that against them. When the maintenance man comes to the apartment, offer him a cold bottled water. Ziploc bags can be reused if you wash them and set them out to dry. Beans go with everything. Always clean the sink and counters after washing the dishes. Wash the dishes by hand. Even if you do have a dishwasher, it won’t scrub as hard as you will. Good tacos are good tacos, no matter how far you have to drive to get them. College should save you from our fates, but if it doesn’t, don’t complain around us. Get an oil change every three months or every 3,000 miles, whichever comes first. Go to a llantero Uncle Junior would trust. Never go to the dealership. Never pay full price for anything. If you do, you should love it. Jalapeños go with everything. Family movies are perfect for laughing or sleeping. Don’t wake Uncle Junior up—he probably needs it. Caldo left out overnight will make you sick. You are not allowed to dislike beans. What kind of Mexican are you? Holidays are for lotería and loud music. Do not bring up the abuse. Paper towels can be reused if you set them out to dry. Removing carpet takes only an afternoon and a set of sore arms. Don’t order tacos from anywhere that doesn’t make their own tortillas. Clean the house before you have guests over. A clean bathroom is a sign you love someone. If you have soft hands, you’ve never done any real work. A woman should wear a dress when possible. Keep mint gum in the car for Saturday traffic. Buy people practical things for Christmas. Your uncle will always need socks. Batteries can be recharged in the freezer. We will always acknowledge your frequent changes in hairstyle. What kind of Mexican are you? Some of us became good Mexican women by learning to make homemade tortillas for our families and some of us refused to become good Mexican women by never learning to make homemade tortillas. Choose what works for you. A woman should wear earrings when possible. The roll of fat around your belly goes with everything. Play lotería with a bottle of spirits and at least five homemade boards. Cursing makes stories funnier. Telling the truth makes everyone quiet. It doesn’t matter if you prefer flour or corn. What matters is knowing which to use in enchiladas. When you leave us, only tell the good stories. If you tell the others, tell them in a language we won’t know to look for.

***

Author photograph courtesy of Ariana Brown

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Ariana Brown is a queer Black Mexican American poet based in Houston, TX and the author of We Are Owed. (Grieveland, 2021) and Sana Sana (Game Over books, 2020). She holds a B.A. in African Diaspora Studies and Mexican American Studies, an M.F.A. in Poetry, and an M.S. in Library Science. Ariana is a 2014 national collegiate poetry slam champion and owes much of her practice to Black performance communities led by Black women poets from the South. She has been writing, performing, and teaching poetry for over a decade.

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The Rumpus publishes original fiction, poetry, literary humor writing, comics, essays, book reviews, and interviews with authors and artists of all kinds. Our mostly volunteer-run magazine strives to be a platform for risk-taking voices and writing that might not find a home elsewhere. We lift up new voices alongside those of more established writers our readers may already know and love. We want to bring new perspectives into the conversation that will make us all look deeper.

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