DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

Brief Overview of Creative Expressions Contest

 

Every freshman student at Stony Brook University is enrolled in one undergraduate college, which will be used to further divide them into small freshman seminars for their first semester. Over the summer of 2010, the class of 2014 was assigned with reading The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. Each freshman was then assigned with creating some sort of writing or art related to the book. Out of each class, two projects would be selected as 'winners' and shown to the author. The poem I wrote--as displayed below--was chosen as one my class' winning projects. 

 

I created this poem using only the phrases I found in the book to juxtapose the family dynamic with its history over time. I suppose, in that way, it's not my poem at all. Normally that would bother me, but it seems a fitting arrangement for the message of the book.

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

Items of Little Note

So, which was it? you ask. An accident, a conspiracy, or a fuku?

It’s one of those easy stories because in essence it explains it all.

 

Folks always underestimate what the promise of a lifetime of starvation, powerlessness, and humiliation can provoke in a young person’s character.

You should have seen him, his mother sighed in her Last Days. He was our little Porfirio Rubirosa.

 

Now here’s a man, El Jefe was rumored to have said, who is capaz

He shook his head solemnly. I’m embarking on a new cycle of my life.

 

Cut the hair, lose the glasses, exercise.

the last thing a freak wants is a helping hand from another freak.

 

After all all his college applications were in and winter was settling its pale miserable ass across northern New Jersey, Oscar fell in love with a girl.

In the old days when his so-called friends would hurt him or drag his trust through the mud he always crawled voluntarily back into the abuse, out of fear and loneliness.

 

Socorro became an ‘anxious’ muchacha; for a time she thinned her hair by pulling it, was seventeen when she caught Abelard’s eye in a training hospital

Now he’ll probably write a book about you.

 

He’d seen the beauty in the back row and felt his sense fly out of him. 

When she said, I love men’s hands, he spread both of his across his face

 

Her ex-boyfriend, Manny, used to smack the shit out of her.

it didn’t matter because once she got into Penn State she didn’t ever intend to come back home.

 

God save your soul, La Inca grumbled, if you think boys are the answer to anything

I’d kill him first.

 

Every Dominican family has stories about crazy loves, about niggers who take love too far 

Your mother could have been a doctor just like your grandfather was.

 

She nodded. I hate that book.

Shrieked: No. Mes. Toques.

 

But what could she do? Beli was a girl, for fuck’s sake.

She just stood there shaking, in her stupid wig and her stupid bata, with two huge foam prostheses in her bra, the smell of burning wig all around us. I almost felt sorry for her.

 

Nothing special, skanks really, but girls nonetheless

She had lines around her eyes and seemed, to Oscar at least, mad open, mad worldly, had the sort of intense zipper-gravity that hot middle-aged women exude effortlessly.

 

A boy happened

 

Nataly had spent four years in a mental hospital (nerves, she said) and was an avowed Wiccan.

I think she’s orchidaceous.

 

What happened was that one day he miscalculated--heartbroken, I’m sure--and ended up being mashed between a bus bound for the Cibao and one bound for Bani.

God. Domini. Dog. Canis.

 

I do not move so precipitously. 

He coughed. I have heard from a reliable source that no Dominican male has ever died a virgin.

 

So you’re Ana’s little friend

Fea’s become my new name

 

Her hold on me was stronger than love

Could you please pass the salt?

 

I do not lie. How many rooms do you want?

believe it or not, I cared about Lola

 

Prostitutes ruined my life.

that was what i imagined you were supposed to say while you were losing your “virginity” to some boy you thought you loved

 

I always hated obvious dreams like that. I still do.

As you might imagine, everybody was in love with her.

 

Zafa or Fuku?

You tell me.

 

You can’t regret the life you didn’t lead.

 

 


 

Works Cited

Diaz, Junot. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. New York: Harper, 2006. Print.

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.