Telephone Call, late evening

By Lisa Alvarez

my cousin’s youngest son calls from Chicago
we have never spoken before like this
 
I worry it is death but no
he wants clarification
 
yet there is grief in his voice
an urgent crack
 
he wants to know who we are
how we got here
 
who came first,
second, third
 
what their names were
where they crossed and when
 
and what was it like
and what it means to us now
 
it should mean something now, he says
especially now
 
we should learn, he says,
to speak Spanish again
 
who they were
is who we are,
 
is who we still should be,
must be
 
do you think it’s possible, he asks
he is not yet twenty-five

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Lisa Alvarez’s poetry has most appeared in Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Huizache, and is forthcoming in So It Goes, the literary journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library. She grew up in and around Los Angeles but has spent the last 30 years in Orange County where she earned an MFA in fiction from UC Irvine, became a professor at the local community college and co-edited the anthology Orange County: A Literary Field Guide. During the summers, she co-directs the Writers Workshops at the Community of Writers in the California’s Sierra Nevada.