BIO
Alfonso "Sito" Sasieta lives on the outskirts of Washington DC and is a member of a local L'Arche community, where adults with and without disabilities share their lives together, and Church of the Saviour, an ecumenical faith community. Most of his writing explores faith, music, mixedness & the dual inheritances that come with growing up in a Lutheran & Peruvian home.
Ode to La Murga de Panama
The Irish poet says
revelation must be terrible
but what the Irish
don’t know is the way
Héctor Lavoe
can slip between your
lips when you’re on the line
making pizzas
at the height of a Friday night
rush, when the tickets are backed up
& the customers are waiting
an hour plus
& what your papi wants
are impeccable
pizza lips
by which I mean crusts, which
are not meant to come up
but ought rather to remain pressed
& stuck
to the perimeter of the pie, but alas,
my last eight
have been sub-par, in spite
of my huffing & puffing & in spite
of Willie Colon, whose lips
just shimmied
through the black stereo
& kissed the rim of his trombone
blowing
that immortal gust
of sound & pulling down
the brass handle of our pizza oven, where I feel
the roiling heat of my father
who is rolling
both his eyes & both his R’s
& however terrible
the moment, I only remember the
ba-da-bam-bam, ba-da-bam-bam
ba-da-bam-bam, ba-da-bam-bam
Cangrejos y Arañas
For Papapa
