I awaken to the sound of a rooster crowing,
the smell of fresh-brewed coffee.
I flash
back to my childhood. I am in the same
house. The same feelings flood
over me, take me back sixty years.
The Last Supper on the wall
Grandkids smile from the refrigerator door.
The house is still the same house.
At this table, the same table, in this kitchen,
I cut my quinceañera cake.
At this table in this house, the same house,
we sat talking after my father’s death,
after Bueli’s death,
after Tino’s death, and
before
important events—
weddings, births, trips.
The legs of the table sustain us still.
Furniture is necessary context
for life in and out of doors.
Pat the windowsill.
Cry a tear of joy or sadness
in this house. The same house.
The very same house.
Our home.
From Meditación Fronteriza: Poems of Love, Life, and Labor (The University of Arizona Press, 2019) by Norma Cantú. Copyright © 2019 by Norma Cantú. Used with the permission of the author.
Elia Cantú has received numerous other awards for her scholarship, writing, and editorial work, including Fulbright and Ford Foundation fellowships, the 2003 Américo Paredes Prize and the 2017 Lifetime Achievement Award, both from the American Folklore Society, the 2017 Luis Leal Award for Distinction in Chicano/Latino Literature from the University of California, Santa Barbara, the 2022 Tejano Heritage Award from Texas A&M University—Kingsville, and the 2022 Lifetime Achievement in Literary Arts Recognition awarded by Gemini Ink Literary at Inkstravaganza. In 2023, she was inducted into the San Antonio Women’s Hall of Fame.
Cantú served as the president of the American Folklore Society (2020–22). She has taught at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln, Texas A&M International University, Georgetown University, the University of California, Santa Barbara, the University of Texas at San Antonio, where she was a professor emerita, and the University of Missouri—Kansas City. She is currently the Norene R. and T. Frank Murchison Endowed Professor in Humanities at Trinity University.
Read more here: normaeliacantu.com
