From One Book Lover

América I. Although  Tía  Miriam boasted she discovered at least half-a-dozen uses for peanut butter — topping for guava shells in syrup, butter substitute for Cuban toast, hair conditioner and relaxer — Mamà  never knew what to make of the monthly five-pound jars handed out by the immigration department until my friend, Jeff, mentioned jelly. II. There was always pork though, for every birthday and wedding, whole ones on Christmas and New Year's Eves, even on Thanksgiving Day — pork, fried, broiled or crispy skin roasted — as well as cauldrons of black beans, fried plantain chips and  yuca con mojito . These items required a special visit to Antonio's  Mercado  on the corner of 8th street where men in  guayaberas  stood in senate blaming Kennedy for everything —  "Ese hijo de puta!" the bile of Cuban coffee and cigar residue filling the creases of their wrinkled lips; clinging to one another's lies of lost wealth, ashamed and ...

Richard Blanco was chosen as the inaugural poet to write the poem for th is year's Presidential and Vice Presidential inauguration . Clic k here to watch him read the poem at the celebration, and enjoy an older poem of his below. El Florida Room Not a study or a den, but El Florida as my mother called it, a pretty name for the room with the prettiest view  of the lipstick-red hibiscus puckered up against the windows, the tepid breeze  laden with the brown-sugar scent  of loquats drifting in from the yard.  Not a sunroom, but where the sun  both rose and set, all day the shadows  of banana trees fan-dancing across the floor, and if it rained, it rained the loudest, like marbles plunking  across the roof under constant threat  of coconuts ready to fall from the sky. Not a sitting room, but El Florida where  I sat alone for hours with bu...