The Janitor Who Swept Where There Was no Dust; and: The Fireflies of Belmont Avenue

Abstract

The Janitor Who Swept Where There Was no Dust; and: The Fireflies of Belmont Avenue Martín Espada (bio) Keywords Martín Espada, janitor, trash, refugee, memorial poem, Brooklyn, butcher shop, fireflies, Yiddish Everybody loved the new janitor, a round man who grinned roundly all day,who hauled away the detritus of daycare in garbage bags: crushed juice boxes,the cellophane of rice cracker snacks, napkins that wiped bawling mouths,toilet paper that sopped up the puddles from bladders that burst like waterballoons. He swept even where there was no dust, mopped even where therewas no dirt, scrubbed the faucets silver and the bowl white even wheneverybody said Gracias, Orlando and told him he could go home for the night. We knew he was a refugee from Pinochet’s Chile. We knew he was a Mormonlike my mother-in-law. I invited Orlando to dinner in Spanish. After dessert,we sipped tea and talked in a corner about the coup. I was in the army, he said.I was in the countryside. I saw nothing. I saw no one arrested. I saw no onetortured. I saw no one die. Nothing? I said. Nothing, he said. He wanted to talkabout the Church of Latter-Day Saints, how they baptized even the dead. I wondered if the Church of Latter-Day Saints baptized the three thousanddead after the coup, holy water rinsing the quicklime and mud fromthe bones, raising them heavenward to sit at the banquet table withthe general and the soldiers who saw nothing. He swept where therewas no dust. He mopped where there was no dirt. We kept his secret. [End Page 64] THE FIREFLIES OF BELMONT AVENUE For Jules Chametzky (1928–2021)I see you as a boy, ten years old, at your father’s butcher shop on Belmont Avenuein Brooklyn, the words Kosher Meat spelled out in Hebrew across the window,the chickens dangling in the window, the words unbroken, the glass unbroken,the butcher unbroken. I see you watch your father as we watch our fathers,scanning the Yiddish newspaper at the counter, Lucky Strike glowing in his mouth,as you wait for his words to rise and fall like fireflies or embers, learning howwords fly or burn, when to cup your hands to catch a word, when to jump away.The customers would lean across the counter to buy chickens from your mother. I see you again at eighty. I watch you as we watch our fathers, as I would watch my fatherand his cigarette, the organizer who could rouse the crowd, waiting for his words to flyor burn. I am a boy from the old neighborhood in Brooklyn, and you are the teacher,slicing up Hemingway like a chicken boned across the page. Yet, for me, a poet withoutthe first strand of gray in his beard, your words are always fireflies. I would cup themin my hands, and see them glow, as I see them now, even as I lift my hands to let them go. [End Page 65] Martín Espada martín espada’s latest book of poems is called Floaters, winner of the National Book Award and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Other collections of poems include Vivas to Those Who Have Failed, The Trouble Ball, and Alabanza. He is the editor of What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump. He has received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Shelley Memorial Award, the Robert Creeley Award, a Letras Boricuas fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Copyright © 2023 The Massachusetts Review, Inc