Thick ham slices carved with a thinned blade,
Small holes, large holes, yeasty smells
Of tasty homemade bread with chewy crusts
and glassine-like spread of white butter
Prepared by Concha, who lectured us in her native tongue
And the only thing comprehensible was her tone,
High-pitched reprimands and demands of some sort.

Sitting among the well-outfitted owners of
Mechanically-sliced Wonder Bread slathered with Jif and Fluff
This manna of the wealthy, parading around
in their Gilligan Island or Batman metal lunch boxes
Where dreams of an I-Dream-of-Jeannie-life
with its disappearing-at-will existed.
Waiting for sixty children to look away
As I unwrapped the noisy wax paper
Concha had folded with angry fingers.

She was probably deported, I surmised
Because this year, when fathers should have been
like Ward Cleaver, we had deviled ham
with questionable viscosity spread pinkish and thickish on 3-day old bread
with Miracle Whip, which is neither mayonnaise nor a miracle
a sandwich Concha would have never dared build.

Somewhere murmuring Spanish curses
On a white bus with no markings,
The Pacific Ocean to the right.
There is no Miracle Whip, Jif, Fluff
and especially no Wonder Bread
Or Ward Cleavers
Or Batman lunch boxes.
(2013)