The Latin Deli Quotes

“ I have always known
that you will visit my grave.
I see myself as a small brown bird,
perhaps a sparrow, watching you
from a low branch as you pray
in front of my name.
I will hear you
sound out my epitaph: Aqui descansa
una mujer que quiso volar.
You will recall telling me
that you once dreamed in Spanish,
and felt the words
lift you into flight.
The sound of wings
will startle you when you say "volar,"
and you will understand.”
― Judith Ortiz Cofer, The Latin Deli: Telling the Lives of Barrio Women

“The oldest woman in the village, Paciencia,
predicts the weather from the flight of birds:
Today it will rain toads, she says,
squinting her face into a mystery of wrinkles
as she reads the sky - tomorrow,
it will be snakes.”
― Judith Ortiz Cofer, The Latin Deli: Telling the Lives of Barrio Women

“Mourning suits us Spanish women.
Tragedy turns us into Antigone - maybe
we are bred for the part.”
― Judith Ortiz Cofer, The Latin Deli: Telling the Lives of Barrio Women

“You are transformed
into one of the gypsy ancestors
we have never discussed.”
― Judith Ortiz Cofer, The Latin Deli: Telling the Lives of Barrio Women

“Without you,
I am an empty place
where spiders crawl and nothing takes root.”
― Judith Ortiz Cofer, The Latin Deli: Telling the Lives of Barrio Women

“Living with her taught me this:
That silence is a thick and dark curtain,
the kind that pulls down over a shop window;
that love is the repercussion of a stone
bouncing off that same window - and that pain
is something you can embrace, like a rag doll
nobody will ask you to share.”
― Judith Ortiz Cofer, The Latin Deli: Telling the Lives of Barrio Women

“In the wind that may travel
as far as you have gone, I send this message: Out here,
in a place you will not forget, a simple man
has been moved to curse the rising sun and to question
God's unfinished work.”
― Judith Ortiz Cofer, The Latin Deli: Telling the Lives of Barrio Women

“I was chaos on the first day,
waiting for the Word.”
― Judith Ortiz Cofer, The Latin Deli: Telling the Lives of Barrio Women

“The decade is over, time to begin forgiving
old sins. Thirteen years since your death
on a Florida interstate - and again
a dream of an old wrong.”
― Judith Ortiz Cofer, The Latin Deli: Telling the Lives of Barrio Women