My eye doctor said my cataract “takes the cake,”
hearkening back to my mother’s talk,
“Oh, kid, oh you kid,” and later, my older cousin’s
“dig” and “Daddy-o,” which I repeated
dressed as a Beatnik for Halloween.

Speaking Spanish I still describe a baby as “maja,”
as old women did in Spain in the ‘70’s,
but Nicaraguan parents today looked stunned,
say they’d say “brava” maybe, not maja,
so living there at first, I was jodida.

Food too. The nacatamal
and gallo pinto taste the same everywhere,
but cookies? Alfajores have molasses and maiz
in Managua— not Argentina’s dulce de leche—
and polvorones there, those big circles of dark sugar
are not little white wedding cakes.

Back in Ohio, I say Nick-aragua in English,
but there, I say Nee-car-agua and Nueva Chork
because language is so fluid,
and I sure don’t want to be left
on the wrong side of a bowl of mondongo,
which in Mexico would be menudo,
and back home, it’s all tripe.

I see this all more clearly now
that my doctor has taken my cataract
which was taking the cake. It took in mondongo,
polvorones, too, and in the Masaya market,
the sign that said “Grapefruit” for what in Spain,
we called turonja.