Gran Torino

This memory must be from the Sixties,
abuelo’s dipping a piece of tortilla in his coffee cup,

getting ready for work
at Schroeder Distributing Company,

a beer distributor,
what, maybe seven blocks

from our house on Fourth Street,
which when abuelo bought this property,

the house was surrounded by pig farms,
abuelo and abuela both gone now,

me in my early sixties, and the neighborhood
full of permanent mojados,

and their gang-banging offspring.
Ay, diosito, please bring back los maranitos!



This poem, of course, mimics the Clint Eastwood movie:
A literal translation of the last line of this poem
would be something like,

God,please bring back the little pigs.

but diosito (God) is used in the diminutive, and so is
maranitos (little pigs) which perhaps, yet probably not, softens
the political incorrectnes (in some circles)towards the people
who have destroyed the speaker's old neighborhood.