I’m at a Jersey Shore family party, age 16.
Half-full Corona bottles gleam with fizzing honey
as July sunshine laves them, my aunt’s backyard full of salsa
and freestyle. Grown folks who’ve beefed since their teen years
chat and try to play nice. I first meet Marco Antonio here:
50-something, distant blood, dark-skinned, gravel-throat speech,
round shades, toquilla straw hat, loose digs that make him shapeless,
infinite. Most address Marco Antonio with a woman’s name,
even calling him ella, she. Down by the dock, in the bay,
a fish slips from a pelican’s beak, swims away.
One cousin dunks another in the pool. Hold … hold …
a little too long ’til he shoots up, his gasps sharp:
hoarse notes; a dirge of some other realm.
On the drive home, my mother explains
Marco Antonio goes by his birth name around family
out of deference to his mother.