Summary

“You and I Belong in this Kitchen” - This multi-line poem is written in first person. The speaker refers to how he and his “longtime hermano” (brother-like friend) do service in the kitchen of a monastery (i.e. a place of spiritual retreat and contemplation). As the speaker describes the cooking pots and utensils, he looks out a window, where he watches “one monk … staring into the nothing / no thoughts around him” and also watches children play with “an exploded tree limb.” He describes how the poem’s meditation room “faces Escondido” where he drove with his father “in ‘54” past fields where he (the speaker / author) worked and where he noticed people had been deported. The poem’s focus then returns to the kitchen, where the speaker contemplates his food and imagines “there is a way to do this...