J Hahn Doleman
Feeding Souls
The old man from Chiapas with the lampshade mustache was waiting for a taste of his wife’s tamales. Just the day before he was telling me about life as a painter in Mexico. He admired muralists like Rivera and Orozco, but tried to capture instead the microcosms of his country. His specialty was retablos—the traditional miniature images of saints—except he stylized them into modern depictions of people he knew and loved.
The man said everyone in Mexico was an artist. His wife, a sculptor of fat and flour, ground her masa into a fine powder, added in lard little by little until the dough turned to taffy. She filled her tamales with a taste and desire that rivaled even her passionate kisses, he winked. Now his lungs were folding in on themselves, and as I watched his vital signs come to rest on the monitor, I wondered what I would say to his wife when she arrived with the tamales.
Día de Muertos a sugar skull dissolves on my tongue
About the Author
J Hahn Doleman is a speech pathologist living and working in San Francisco. He serves as a contest coordinator for Haiku Poets of Northern California.