Poem for Miguel: The Living Room
Karen Jaime
Karen Jaime recorded audio narration on June 21, 2022, at the Hemispheric Institute office in New York City.
There was the living room
And Rutgers
And Ntozake
And Amiri
And Allen
And Lois
And Carmen
And Pedro
And Lucky
And Papoleto
And Mariposa
And Willie
And Bob
And Keith
And Felice
And Hell
Even Me
And who can forget Julio?
And Pepe
And Rome
And Sam
And Miky—
whose ashes were spread
throughout the Lower East Side,
whose picture
was in that nook,
right when you walked in
with the candle—
And Sandra
And Tato
And Bimbo—
Thank you for Loisaida—
And we have East 3rd Street, btwn. B and C
And Adela’s on East 5th
Where you told me to never forget what I am worth.
And there’s the night that Pedro died
Your first feature on a Friday night
And you made sounds into words
And brought us back to the days
When it wasn’t
About scores
Judges
Trophies
Or HBO,
When it was about hearing a poem—
Thank you Steve Cannon—
When it was about
Having your voice heard
And making it count
When there were no Latino Lit. classes
When Nuyorican was a bad word
When it was about the walk over junkies
When it was about Marcel
and the banners in the attic
when it was about Nathan P.
and Dot
and Clare—
whose logo is still used,
when it was about Mongo Affair
and Action
and Maggie
and Regie
and Edwin
When it was about El Reverendo
and his church
when it was about the murals
not the movies
when it was about
the rhythm
and the streets
and the movement back and forth
when it was vaya poetry
before Ed wrote about
Living in Spanglish
before gentrification hit
before it cost
double digits to get in
when it was just a dream
and a way to clear out your living room
there was you . . .
and then there was
ALWAYS
Miguel…
Karen Jaime is Assistant Professor of Performing and Media Arts and Latina/o Studies at Cornell University. A Mellon/HIDVL Scholar in Residence at the Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics at New York University in 2022, Jaime was also awarded a Career Enhancement Junior Faculty Fellowship from the Institute for Citizens & Scholars (formerly the Woodrow Wilson) in 2018, a Rockefeller Foundation Research Fellowship, and was a Chancellor’s Post-Doctoral Research Associate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Jaime’s monograph, The Queer Nuyorican: Racialized Sexualities and Aesthetics in Loisaida (NYU Press, 2021), winner of The Victor Villaseñor Best Latino Focused Nonfiction Book Award at the International Latino Book Awards in 2022, argues for a reexamination of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe as a historically queer space, both in terms of sexualities and performance practices. Her critical writing has been published in Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, e-Misférica, Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, ASAP/J, TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly and Performance Matters. Jaime is also an accomplished spoken word/performance artist who served as the host/curator of the Friday Night Poetry Slam at the world-renowned Nuyorican Poets Cafe (2003-2005). As a published poet her writing is included in The Best of Panic! En vivo from the East Village, Flicker and Spark: A Queer Anthology of Spoken Word and Poetry, a special issue of Sinister Wisdom: A Multicultural Lesbian Literary and Art Journal, “Out Latina Lesbians,” and in the anthology Latinas: Struggles and Protest in 21st Century USA*.