What do the toritilla, menudo, and chorizo symbolize? Suggestions? Poem by Ray Gonzalez.?
I praise the tortilla in honor of El Panzon who hit me in school every day and made me see how the bruises on my arms looked like the brown clouds on my mother's tortillas. I praise the tortilla because I know they can fly into our hands like eager flesh of the one we love, those soft earnings we delight in biting as we tear the tortilla and wipe the plate clean.
I praise the menudo as visionary food that it is, the tripas y posole tight flashes of color we see as the red caldo smears our notebooks like a vision we have not had in years, our lives going down like the empty bowl of menudo exploding in our stomachs with the chili piquin of our poetic dreams.
I praise the chorizo and smear it across my face and hands, the dayglow brown of it painting me with the desire to find out what happened to la familia, why the chorizo sizzled in the pan and covered the house with a smell of childhood we will never have again, the chorizo burrito hot in our hands, as we ran out to play.