LETTER TO NORTH AMERICA FROM MY KITCHEN

LETTER TO NORTH AMERICA FROM MY KITCHEN

WHILE MAKING JELLY FROM WINE GRAPES AFTER RETURNING

FROM ADELANTE, THE MICRO CREDIT LENDING PROGRAM

IN HONDURAS WITH THOUGHTS ON WHO’S RICH AND WHO’S POOR

AFTER THE ECONOMIC MELTDOWN IN THE UNITED STATES

 

High heat from the big burner breaks down grape skins

Releasing tannin with juice vintners call lucid memory.

Oh, the great spike of alcohol! Years ago, life descended

In story and song turning me away from acceptable truths

and compromise accompanying memorable wine.

The old wine press gave me the necessary extraction.

 

Put yourself in the shoes of a man trying to get a small loan

To start a business in Honduras. Try it. Do you think you could

Get a loan for a hundred dollars?—Make this jelly, pay back your loan,

And earn a profit? Do you? You paid top dollar for those jars.

That pectin’s not cheap, and you need another twenty pounds of sugar.

One more question. Where will you find the women to trust you?

 

Women and children don’t even figure in definitions of who’s poor.

There’s a poverty World Bank knows nothing about.

Read Muhammad Yunnus. Women join in groups of five

Because that’s how many fingers there are on the hand.

Interdependent from the beginning, they get no breaks

On deregulating anything. A man would need four women

 

 

 

 To trust him, and another fifteen to start an assembly where he lives.

Women suffer more. They know men drink up the loans and leave.

In the world of development when you mix the poor

With the non-poor, the less poor always drive out the poor.

“What was required,” Yunnus writes,  “… an institution that would lend

To those who had nothing. People suffer for lack of 22 cents.”

 

But the bread maker, María Lucía Hernández Martinez,

Gets up at 2 am and bakes bread. She rides the bus

Into La Ceiba and sells it. There’s an orchid attached to a plant

Winding its way into my eye from her fence pole.

It’s radically open. Improving this fence

Is one of Maria’s dreams. Why do I want my own

Story attached to a parasitic flower?

María buys flour in bags in La Ceiba.

She can’t afford to buy flour—or milk—in bulk.

Flour and milk has doubled in price in the last year.

When things get tough in the rich countries,

Trouble first doubles up the poor. Maria’s a single

 

Mother with seven kids, three still at home.

A frying pan with a spoon of beans left from breakfast

Tells the story. Dirt floor and tin roof

Covers the oven that bakes the bread.

Horno/furnace. Her treasure. Cerco y casa.

Fence and home repairs.

María es la jefaDe Buena Amanecer. Thanksgiving Dawn

Is the name of her assembly. My jelly would be good

On María’s bread. Would I force her out of business?

Jesus has a parable of the 99. Leave the 99 to save the one.

The juice on my stove bubbles up from below.

María turns jelly jars upside down. This time,

 

It’s the 99 who need to be saved. Adelante urges

Us forward, knowing, not knowing. The jelly

Is a trick against safety. How you’re wired

Into interdependence gets lost with your retirement plan.

María is the leader, boss, and angel of bread. Pan de cada día

Is her invitation. First loans average 89 dollars.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jim Bodeen

21 September—28 October, 2008

La Ceiba, Honduras—Yakima, Washington

 

 

Jim and Karen Bodeen are the publishers and proprietors of Blue Begonia Press, an exclusively poetry press. Jim made his first trip to Honduras and Adelante in February of 2007 (see http://bluebegoniapress.com/index.php?page_id=318), and recently returned in September of 2008 with a group from the Whatcom County North Rotary Club. Jim is a poet whose passion is recording the history of common people; and he has worked to record the history of a family in the village of La Cuestita, state of Michoacán, México through word, poem, quilt, film, photo and family tree. Jim lives in Yakima, Washington with his wife, Karen, and regularly enjoys spending time with his four grandchildren.