I'm sitting with my Aunt Mercedes
while her maid Rosario
scurries in and out of the room
complaining, doing everything wrong and
Mercedes is laughing and telling me
Rosario likes to pretend she is dumb,
or confused, but she is neither,
it is just something she has to do.
But someone inside her is watching me,
someone who is leaning forward
not like a plump Panamanian aunt
but like an ancient queen
about to take the messenger's measure.
It is a hard, shrewd look,
and then she is pushing a picture
of her father across the table, telling me
he held his own against the blacks,
and the Chinese, and the thieving Americans,
but he was different from them,
he was kind, both mother and father
to his children, and she is looking at me again
as if searching for some flaw
it is so quick, and then she
is motioning to Rosario to
pour more coffee, first
in my cup, and then in hers.