Saudade
Enzo Gangi
1. Pollution
My mother’s cars have their own legacy—a family history made of
mechanic visits and small, fleeting paint scratches.
The old, rickety BMW had always been my favorite,
and performed best on sunny, empty highways.
I don’t remember much about the Mercedes-Benz minivan. It was terribly short-lived.
I held no strong feelings of it.
But I never liked the washed-out-silver Honda—how something had jammed
the passenger window and made it hard to open.
Yet, it is the one I remember the most. There’s a strange nostalgia
that insists to remain, that comes to me
when I think about the time I complained to my mother,
and she said that it could drive, so it didn’t matter.
It made sense. It was her biggest, most unintentional gift to me—
an utter disregard for high expectations.
2. 21st Century Lusiads
Back then, Tuesdays were the most volatile day.
Between the morning and afternoon classes, we snuck out
and lost ourselves in the concrete jungle,
became tangled like the electric wires
hanging close to our heads.
We climbed onto the bus, and it hissed
like an opened bottle of sticky, knockoff cola pop.
A friend complained about hot, scorching winters.
Seasons refracted through the vandalized windows,
the sun peeks through the trees and
is eclipsed by the overpass.
Those were our Great Navigations, our compasses
leading to the nearest, cheapest gyudon place.
But they were also a bittersweet taste of something else—
of both longing and the jungle’s hospitality.
3. FILIPE GANGIA and revolution
It is the late 19th century,
and Philippo’s family of eight steps off a ship from Genoa
into a metropolitan center in its infancy.
He is not FILIPE,
at least not yet. Not until the immigration official
misspells both his first and last name on the arrival charter—
when Philippo and FILIPE first become interchangeable.
The air is pungent with seawater, a scent he has not
yet learned to miss. The Europeans like him
are headed to the country,
where the coffee fields have spread like the fires in the ship’s boiler room.
The scorching sun cracks his spine in half
as he curves and picks blood-red coffee berries from
the shrubs. Some say he is FILIPE, but he knows better—
to not speak in borrowed voices is his greatest act of resistance.
4. Basil stalk
My father taught me all the expletives I know.
Together, we captured seconds, still paintings of oil and kitchen shears,
the hot July the wish had never went away.
Not wanting the sun to rise again is more bitter than it sounds like.
Anemic phone calls at midnight. Being fascinated by the fridge that made ice cubes.
Crushing them in my teeth.
5. FILIPE GANGIA and the future
It is the early 21th century, and Philippo Gangi is long dead by now. After the coffee beans, his family moved to other ventures. The sun-kissed farm in the country is where his bones rest, bleached like the animal skulls splayed across the field. From there, his son, my grandfather, would depart into the city to be a factory worker, so that pollution could seep into his children’s pores. My father left his home when he was twelve to live in a house that was not his. On holidays, he returned to the farm so that he could see pictures yellow in their frames. Listen to my great-grandmother, who fought in the war, say very little about her husband.
6. Windows
The sound of turbines
project out into the sky, rumbling the concrete under
my feet, feeling the turbulence even before I depart
into uncertainty.
It was my mother’s
old Peugeot that brought me here, and it is parked
under the rain. One of the many that drank gasoline
like no tomorrow.
Like mine, the cars
have a complexly foreign, mostly European lineage,
with a handful of drinking problems and an infamous
case of dementia.
We are versed
in the practice of longing for people and events
we could have never truly known. A lost lover, or a song.
I would know. Because I am part
of a family of voluntary
exiles. Because when the Portuguese caravels
left behind a generation of future melancholics,
a word was made
in their commemoration.
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