I prefer red chile over my eggs <br />and potatoes for breakfast. <br />Red chile ristras decorate my door, <br />dry on my roof, and hang from eaves. <br />They lend open-air vegetable stands <br />historical grandeur, and gently swing <br />with an air of festive welcome. <br />I can hear them talking in the wind, <br />haggard, yellowing, crisp, rasping <br />tongues of old men, licking the breeze. <br /> <br />But grandmother loves green chile. <br />When I visit her, <br />she holds the green chile pepper <br />in her wrinkled hands. <br />Ah, voluptuous, masculine, <br />an air of authority and youth simmers <br />from its swan-neck stem, tapering to a flowery collar, <br />fermenting resinous spice. <br />A well-dressed gentleman at the door <br />my grandmother takes sensuously in her hand, <br />rubbing its firm glossed sides, <br />caressing the oily rubbery serpent, <br />with mouth -watering fulfillment, <br />fondling its curves with gentle fingers. <br />Its bearing magnificent and taut <br />as flanks of a tiger in mid-leap, <br />she thrusts her blade into <br />and cuts it open, with lust <br />on her hot mouth, sweating over the stove, <br />bandanna round her forehead, <br />mysterious passion on her face <br />as she serves me green chile con carne <br />between soft warm leaves of corn tortillas, <br />with beans and rice–her sacrifice <br />to here little prince. <br />I slurp form my plate <br />with last bit of tortilla, my mouth burns <br />and I hiss and drink a tall glass of cold water. <br /> <br />All over New Mexico, sunburned men and women <br />drive rickety trucks stuffed with gunny sacks <br />of green chile, from Belen, Beguita, Wllard, Estancia, <br />San Antonio y Socorro, from fields <br />to roadside stands, you see them roasting green chile <br />in screen-sided homemade barrels, and for a dollar a bag, <br />we relive this old, beautiful ritual again and again.<br /><br />Jimmy Santiago Baca<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/green-chile/
