Herrera - Cinnamon girl: letters found inside a cereal box

Cover art 2005 by Ali Smith Cover design by Kathleen Duncan SkateFate Laughing Out Loud, I Fly Cinnamon Girl Photo by Randy Vaughn-Dotta JUAN FELIPE HERRERA is the U.S. Poet Laureate and was inspired by the early Chicano Movement and by heavy exposure to various poetry, jazz, and blues performance streams. His published works include 187 Reasons Mexicanos Cant Cross the Border: Undocuments 19712007; Border-Crosser with a Lamborghini Dream; Mayan Drifter: Chicano Poet in the Lowlands of America; Thunderweavers; Laughing Out Loud, I Fly, a Pura Belpr Honor Book; Amricas Award winners CrashBoomLove and Cinnamon Girl; Calling the Doves, which won the Ezra Jack Keats Award; SkateFate; and The Upside Down Boy, which was adapted into a musical. He has received the National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship, and previously served as California Poet Laureate. He has taught at both California State University, Fresno, and University of California, Riverside, and held the Toms Rivera endowed chair in creative writing. He lives in Fresno, California.

You can visit him online at www.juanfelipepoet.com. Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

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CINNAMON GIRL: Letters Found Inside a Cereal Box. Copyright 2005 by Juan Felipe Herrera. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. www.epicreads.com

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Herrera, Juan Felipe.

Cinnamon girl : letters found inside a cereal box / Juan Felipe Herrera.1st ed. p. cm. Joanna Cotler Books. Summary: Yolanda, a Puerto Rican girl, tries to come to terms with her painful past as she waits to see if her uncle recovers from injuries he suffered when the towers collapsed on September 11, 2001. ISBN 978-0-06-244759-3 EPub Edition February 2016 ISBN 9780062447609 1.

September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001Juvenile fiction. [1. September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001Fiction. 2. UnclesFiction. 3.

New York (N.Y.)Fiction. 4. Puerto RicansFiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.H432135Ci 2005	2004026185
[Fic]dc22

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16 17 18 19 20 PC/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Revised paperback edition, 2016 For my lovely cousin,Nan Paloma Quintana Guerrero,February 2, 1978August 4, 2003, in memoryFor all the Cinnamon GirlsSee the steel of Tompkins gate bent back and wiseSee the dead grass that fights to climb and riseSee that boy trippin into a cool pool of dirty moonlightSee that girl lickin her pocked arm as if sugar brightSee the last limbs of autumn, frayed and yet, still aliveSee those kids lean on the fence as if their secret knifeSee the wind scoot and scoop their last ragged sighsSee the leaves drift away and tremble by the cellar iceSee that muchacha swaying to a song in the fiery stormSee my shadow dancing to its own silenceso alone.Canelita, lower east side, nyc9/19/01 Wednesday night, Lower East Side, hospital,4th floorwrapped in gauze Uncle DJs wrapped in gauze. He dreams inside a foreign islita that no one has discovered except himself.

There are congas under a tropical moon gold nectar saxophones and pale blue-blue maraca stars. The galaxy spins and then fire-bursts into a bird from San Juan, wings red-red as the Flamboyan tree, and it speaks with the dark cinnamon of the Caribbean night. Its eyes are aquamarine and when it sings green-green rain pours and the soft island sways to a hip-hop mambo of amor, then adios. But I dont want to say adios. Tape across the mouth hands strapped to the side of the hospital bed rails. IV and blood bottle lines tangle down to uncle DJs arm.

A Darth Vader machine beeps every time he breathes through a sky-white see-through hose down his throat. Sweep my thin hand across the bed rail just in case there is dust gnawing around the chrome. Uncle DJs swallowed enough dust two buildings of dust, Twin Towers of dust. Last week, he called mam Mercedes and said, Hey sis, gotta do somethingI came to deliver roses, as usual, ya know. A jet or something hit Tower One. A blast, and then, another.

Now, I gotta do something. Theres fire and screams all around. Eleven thirty pm. News TV. Blue flash inside the eerie hospital room. Ta Gladys talks loud to Mam: Whats happening to my city? The feelings gone, Mercedes.

The melao is missin. Yolanda Mara is my melao, Mam says. Last night I dreamt I went with Mam and ta Gladys to Ground Zero. Ta Gladys digswith her glossy orange fingernails.A police dog barks and digs-digs too.There is a tiny cone,a holefull of black nothing and tappingdeep below the rubble. A moan. A long moanfrom underground.

Echoes up Canal Street to Chambers.Rubble echoesone hundred feet high of brokensteel bones and tiny lives crushed forever. Echo. Echo. Slvamelo, ta Gladys prays out loud in her plastic tiger-print jacket, Diosito slvamelo, save him for me, Har lo que quieras, Ill do whatevah. She makes a manda, a promise like she did when mam Mercedes told her last month that I was getting into trouble at Longfellow School in West Liberty, Iowa. She promised La Virgencita that she would take us in so I could get better. This morning, ta Gladys mumbles another manda, something about going back to Puerto Rico and helping poor kids in Aguas Buenas.

In my dream, Mam and aunt Gladyskneel down slow on the sharp dust of the WorldTrade Centerlike a church all broken.A rescue worker with a dog saysI can hear him tapping...tap, tap, tap!Rescue Company #1on his bitten shirt. All of a sudden, bam! Like the crushed tower, my throat gets fiery, then empty in the hospital roomuncle DJ! I want to shout louder than the Darth Vader machine. Nada, Nada.