La Camarera

tomato juice
i sip
slouchingly

my immigrant ancestors crossed the Atlantic
fleeing the heavy hand of the Iron Chancellor
for whom was named the state capitol of North Dakota
they washed ashore in a city named by old veterans of the American Revolution
for a Roman emperor
and built on land stolen from butchered Shawnee
Cincinnati congealed into a city selling saltpork to the slavemasters downriver
my people learned Englishe
rode streetcars through the West End
later bought Chevys on credit
and drank Hudepohl during Reds games

your people are the survivors
of a bloody genocidal conquest
that felled most of Mesoamerica
with bubonic plague
smallpox
and iron swords
who were they specifically
i want to ask you
De donde eres usted?
but i can see you are busy
Oaxacans?
Mixtecs?
mestizos
enslaved by Aztec nobility and then raped by conquistadores
(Hernando de Soto used to have a big luxury sedan named after him
all the way up here in los estados unidos)

my Germans profited by
landing in an emerging empire
a former British settler colony whose wealth
was built on industry and trade
the Puritans' sober woolens were
the predecessor of the ubiquitous gray flannel suit
today worn by bankers the world over

in contrast the Spanish wanted mostly
silver
gold
and religious conversion
expelling Iberia's Jews just before decimating the Arawak
los conquistadores dreamed of
encomiendas
vast feudal estates
transplanted from the medieval Castile of their imaginations
except in this version with indigenos cast as the serfs
instead of them
(Englishmen did the same in Georgia)
the treasures of the Aztecas were soon spent fighting the doomed Reconquesta
against Protestantism
leaving only empty coffers
and illiterate peasants

Porfirio Diaz said, "Poor Mexico - so far from God, and so close to the United States!"
we took Aztlan in 1848
a third of Old Mexico
drew lines across the Sonoran
- surely one of the globe's most artificial borders -
and then built quaint villas in Inglewood with tile roofs
where Boyz N the Hood was later filmed

all this has brought you here
to Ohio of all places
we both know this
this is why you are serving me breakfast
and not the other way around
eggs and chorizo
i am courteous
and i always tip thirty percent in diners