Naming Names Poem by Jean Marie Ruiz

In my father's backyard a feral calico cat
lets me caress her.
I call her Dulce
and tell her she offers herself too easily.
She thinks she wants inside the house
where I have never lived,
where my father berates me
for leaving the lights on.
He worries about the wrong debts.

The calico runt of Dulce's litter
is bowlegged and orphan-thin.
I call her Cricket.
Grace is her ginger sister
who resembles Faye Dunaway in 'Chinatown.'
Their father is a bully
with badly healed wounds.
He does not deserve Dulce.
Later, yet surprisingly soon,
Grace's own kittens
disappear under suspicious circumstances
before they can be named.

For days after my father dies
the San Fernando sun
is a copious orange
of glowing fish scales,
a mackerel sky.
Cricket howls my name from outside
the window of my brother's old bedroom
where I discover an oil painting
signed with the Spanish name
my father was born with.
In the painting, a man in a sombrero
and huaraches sits against a whitewashed wall
painting a clay pot.
It is a painting tourists would buy.
It is the only painting by my father
I have ever seen.
I take it home.