And This is Where We Lived When We Lived in the City

He used to panhandle on Dupont Circle in the early 80s. That was where I’d get off from the subway at the end of the day when I worked at the Library of Congress, and he was one of the people I’d always stop to talk to before I made my way back home to Mt. Pleasant. This was during a brief period in the 80s when I would take a lot of photographs, and of course one day I happened to have my camera with me when I stopped to chat with him. That’s when I took this photograph. A couple of weeks later, when I had it developed, I gave him a copy. “Oh, that’s beautiful, man,” he said and he smiled more than I’d ever seen him smile before. Though, now that I think of it, maybe I had never seen him smile at all before then. He really seemed to like his portrait. He called himself “Om.”

-Jose Padua

Photograph by Jose Padua

The Beautiful Things

In Virginia this fat
southern kid
sits by me on
the bus and starts
talking to a man
wearing a baseball cap
who’s sitting across
the aisle from him.
“My daddy once
had this beautiful
antique gun,”
he said.
“It was the most
beautiful thing
I’d ever seen.
But one day he
got mad and busted me
over the head with it,
breaking it into pieces.
I forgave him
for busting me
on the head
but not for
breaking that gun.
It was the most
beautiful thing
in the world.”
The man with
the baseball cap nodded.
He seemed to
understand.

-Jose Padua

Photograph by Jose Padua

Train in Vain

When I lived in New York the landlord of my
building on Avenue B always called me
“Jose Baby,” while the woman in the apartment
above me who always got the pipes clogged
by flushing cat litter down the toilet was
“Fucking Stacy” and the woman below me
was nudge nudge, “Linda, wouldn’t ya like
a shot at her, Jose Baby?” but Linda’s boyfriend
was Shamir who always looked as serious as
a hit man and the only time I ever saw her
apartment was when water was dripping down
from my bathroom into hers one night when
the pipes burst because Fucking Stacy was
taking one long fucking shower in the bathroom
above mine, and her water went down her drain
into the pipe, then into a hole in the pipe
through which the water rushed and burst
a hole in my bathroom wall after which
the water flowed like the East River
down into Linda’s bathroom, and Linda
walked up to my apartment, knocked on the
door and asked “What is this shit?” then
walked me down to her bathroom where
I said, “Linda, this is Fucking Stacy’s
water, just passing through my bathroom
into yours,” and though no moisture was
ever exchanged again between Linda and me
we got along really well from that day on.

-Jose Padua

Photograph by Jose Padua

On the Sunshine of Our Lives and the Beauty of These Summer Days Spent in the City

At the Port Authority bus station
in New York City
my daughter watches
as the tall strange man
with the tin foil wrapped
around the short braids of hair
on his head takes a cross-eyed portrait
of himself with his phone
while he stands in the doorway
of a coffee shop down from
the Greyhound ticket counter.
When she asks me if I see him
because she needs to be reassured
from time to time that every
bit of life we witness is real,
I tell her, “Yes, I saw him too,”
and I’m glad to sense that
what she feels is more sadness
than fear because here’s
a man so lost in his own
world there’s no way to count
the miles it would take to get back
to a place where his feet could
once again touch solid earth.
And though what I feel
at times like this is far from joy
I find myself lifted because
fear is like a slow gathering
of suspicions that are never
answered and we get on our bus
and ride like history down wide,
dirty rivers toward toward all
the beautiful things that
need to be brought back
into our lives.

-Jose Padua

Photograph by Jose Padua

That Certain Kind of Light

In high school it was the son
of a congressman from Texas
who seemed to have the most
fun ridiculing my Tourette’s
tics. I’d shrug my shoulders,
blink my eyes, and suddenly
tilt my head as if I were
emptying out the fluid;
it must have looked ridiculous.
He talked fast, did magic
tricks, and was so confident
he never had to watch his back,
never had to do anything other
than sit back, stand up, or laugh,
and he was so much cooler
than I could ever hope to be.
There were days then when
I felt so small I almost felt
I wasn’t even there, which
made it easier when people
were laughing at me and I
felt as if I were watching it
rather than living it and from
a safe, almost silent distance.
And this is why I can never go
back to feeling so small, why
for as long as I live I will never
not be there, will never keep
my distance, and will never run
for Congress. Because my freshman
year in high school was like that
Creedence Clearwater Revival song,
but instead of the words being “I
ain’t no Senator’s son” my words
were, “I ain’t no congressman’s
son,” which didn’t sound as angry,
and wasn’t as easy to sing with
a snarl, but my Dad had two
jobs and my Mom had just
as much to do, and I was born
in the city and made of the sort
of light that could never keep still.

-Jose Padua

Photograph by Jose Padua

The Idea of Order Near the Exit to the Interstate

This morning when I got to my
local big chain coffee house I
ordered a breakfast sandwich
and the woman behind the counter
asked me my name and I said “Jose”
and she grimaced and said “huh?”
and I said it again louder, clearer,
prouder and sat down at a table to wait.
A few minutes later another person
behind the counter starts saying
“House. House. House!” and I realize
he’s trying to say my name, and
I pick up my sandwich, look at the
wrapper on which the word “Hose”
is written instead of “Jose” meaning
that the English-speaking person
behind the counter couldn’t even read
or say the English word “Hose” correctly,
and as I sat down to eat my sandwich
I thought about the long, slow day
ahead of me and all the beautiful
ways I fail to be more American.

-Jose Padua

Photograph by Jose Padua

Revelation at a Cracker Barrel Old Country Store and Restaurant on a Sunday Night

We’re waiting for the cashier
so we can pay for dinner
after eating at our local
Cracker Barrel Old Country
Store and Restaurant
when my wife looks
to our four-year old son
who’s standing in front
of a rack of camouflage
colored jelly beans and
says, “Stay here, now.”
He pauses for
a long moment,
turns to his right to look at
and perhaps catch
a whiff of a chocolate
scented teddy bear,
then looks back all
slow and serious
over to my wife and to me
and his older sister
and says “Strange things
are going on,”
which reminds me
that revolution begins
not so much with
the ability to recognize
what’s wrong but
with the confidence
to speak it.

-Jose Padua

Photograph by Jose Padua