Archive of New Mexico Poetry – Geney Stan

Chili; (as in “green”; as in “to be roasted”)

We New Mexico women Hispanic, Navajo and Anglo gather year after year in this season,
sweating and heavy laden on sizzling pavement and sidewalk
packing our burlap sacks not on our backs but in grocery carts.
Here winter’s a tiny dot on someone else’s graph but we’re getting
ready by the bags full. Hugging warehouse wall,
edging into thin shade, we stand
eyeing baskets parked in line
like our children at a dance recital
waiting in the wings
for their moment to glitter on stage.

Proudly waving plastic ribbons like tutus, the bags, paid and ready
for roasting, coast beneath pink and purple patio umbrella,
like a flowered spotlight stuck in battered tire rim. Smiling brown
wrinkles glistening in sweat the grey-haired roaster
pours green pods shiny as sequins,
fat and long as corn on the cob,
into huge wire cylinders like industrial colanders, sets them turning
under blue and red butane torches round and round like hundreds of
lazy hamsters in a cage.

Or is this ritual a recital after all?
Less spectators than supplicants
we huddle in communion
before our laboring priest.
How can he stand this sweltering sun
with nothing for shelter but translucent green shade? Transforming
firm flesh into molten flavor as blistering to his skin as melted
silver, he pulls open-toed woodcutter’s socks
above welder’s gloves.
He sweeps away falling seeds and burnt skin flecks like sparks; black
specks scamper on asphalt
like burnt paper from someone’s trash.

He pours transfigured peppers into plastic bag, outer raiment toasted
to tatters
just so it may be shucked
so we may throw away the flaking husks
and devour juicy kernels within.

Done: paid, roasted, packed and steaming. we ladies make home with
our haul in pickup or car trunk in an agonizing smell of postponed
tasting. Digging into our nets,
we lay limp chilis on table
like fish row after row,
sack for freezer, dozen by dozen, this staple of winter, this loaf
that feeds unending
chomping, several with salt and crackers on the spot.

We’ll dice it with tomatoes, add flour and water, slice it into
omelets, dip with chips,
pour over burritos, into beans,
smother fried potatoes, ladle from stews.

Our mouths flaming, our lips cinders,
we know we’ve got hold of a wolf in sheep’s clothing; these cool green miracles
baptized in blazes rise out of ashes,
loose our frozen tongues,
set us on fire.

About the Poet
Geney Stan was born in Matador, Texas and reared on a farm near that small, West Texas town. She graduated from the University of North Texas in Denton with a master’s of art degree in English and Philsophy. She taught English composition and philosophy for three years at Mountain View College in Dallas and has just retired from San Juan College in Farmington, New Mexico, where she spent the last twenty two years teaching English composition, literature and philosophy.