Fine Legacy
Rodolfo Alderete Venegas was born in San Pablo, CA., and went to UC Berkeley, majoring in art and cultural anthropology, with an emphasis in Aztec societies.
His father is Aztec, from Mexico.
Rodolfo owns his own business and his own home.
He has high blood pressure. In this recession, he says,
he can't afford to go for a check-up, he can't afford
health insurance.
This was the way the pounding began --
cracking open the inside of his skull like an egg,
and he could not lift it, his head, from the pillow
He had sensed the edge of something for weeks
this thing growing louder in him, waking him up
to his body, fanning his fear like fire
But he would not go to the doctors, with their
large fees leaking like gas under an old house
He was overweight, he knew that,
he knew too that his pressure was up,
he was trying to lose weight
But his tongue had a mind of its own,
assimilated long ago, colonized
from its original Aztec diet
of beans and rice and squash and chilis
to the fine legacy of the Spanish invaders --
fat and pork and beef
© 1992 Frances Payne Adler