I Loved the World So I Married It by José Olivarez

I Loved the World So I Married It

by José Olivarez

music, even on the day my grandma died

there were mangos though i tasted nothing.

but slowly i came back to the world & carne asada.

better than i remembered, smoke off the meat.  i could not

contain my happiness even though it felt offensive

to smile with my grandma buried & getting eaten

by the flowers. & sometimes, i look at my love &

think i would like to stay, to put a welcome mat

on our doorstep with our names hyphenated.

when i was young i believed in forever. then

my uncle died & i knew forever included none

of my family, included no friends, their stories

rotting in my head until i lose them again, so

i know i will divorce the world & let it keep

my most treasured possessions: a six piece

with lemon pepper & mild sauce on, all the honey

of a slow kiss, my Apple Music playlists,

the way mi abuelita smiled & called me Lupito.

i hated that name except when she said it.

This poem was first published in The Rumpus in 2018. You can see it--and read 2 other poems by this poet--by clicking here.

Sunday's poem was a love poem with a twist. (Go read it! It is great!). This poem is also a love poem--love of grandmother, the world, family, food, "my love," and life.

In July, I heard a poetry workshop led by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer at the NFSPS Convention. Her main take-away was that poems, to be interesting, need a "but." Perhaps not literally, but there needs to be some sort of change or challenge or turn or question or opposition or doubt. This poem has this in spades.

The poem begins in grief, with the acknowledgement that life does go on after a loved one dies--music, food, happiness, and hope are still there, even if it takes us a while in our grieving to appreciate them.

The speaker admits "when I was young I believed in forever" which is what we all believe when we are young; as readers, we relate to this. He then tells us his uncle died which caused him to rethink wanting to live forever. Realizing that living forever means watching everyone you love die, he he states that he would end up divorcing the world, his love. He would do what we all do when we die--he would leave behind the things he loved and the memories of the people he loved.

The poem ends with the images it started with: music, food, and the speaker's abuela. But we end with a smile, provided by the speaker, and proving that people leave us precious things when they die. In his case, it is his grandma's smile and her nickname for him. After 9 couplets, we end with a separate line:

i hated that name (okay, that alone would make us smile) except when she said it.

(ah! so much sweetness without getting sappy! and it is also our last "but" in a poem that has twisted us around and around.

Also, "eaten by the flowers." What a much better way of thinking of our loved ones we have buried than worms or dust or however else people think of decay.

Please head to YouTube to watch/listen to José Olivarez reading this poem. Click here for that. He reads it from his book Citizen Illegal, published by Haymarket Books in 2018. It won many honors and awards and lots of praise, all rightly so. You can buy that book here as an ebook, a paperback, or a hardcover book. His 2023 poetry collection, Promises of Gold; published by Macmillan, is a book of love poetry . . . love in all of its forms, much like the poem above.

Grief and love is a natural combination. Olivarez's poem is a good one to print out and hold on to. See you Sunday!