Jorge the Church Janitor Finally Quits
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1989
No one asks
where I am from,
I must be
from the country of janitors,
I have always mopped this floor.
Honduras, you are a squatter's camp
outside the city
of their understanding.
No one can speak
my name,
I host the fiesta
of the bathroom,
stirring the toilet
like a punchbowl.
The Spanish music of my name
is lost
when the guests complain
about toilet paper.
What they say
must be true:
I am smart,
but I have a bad attitude.
No one knows
that I quit tonight,
maybe the mop
will push on without me,
sniffing along the floor
like a crazy squid
with stringy gray tentacles.
They will call it Jorge.
from Rebellion is the Circle of a Lover's Hands
My interpretation of this poem:
Martin Espada has found a way to put humor into his negativity in the story “Jorge the Church Janitor Finally Quits.” This church janitor seems to carry a feeling of neglect with him throughout this piece. In the very first stanza he says:
“No one asks where I am from, I must be from the country of janitors.”
This implies that no one at the church talks to him, he seems very lonely. Obviously he is fed up when he claims:
“No one knows that I quit tonight, maybe the mop will push on without me.”
This makes me wonder whether his name is actually Jorge or if that is just what people call him. In the last stanza he implies that he is invisible pushing the mop and that they will not be able to tell the difference between him and the next guy that comes in to clean after he leaves.
The fact that he is at a church janitor makes this story even more lonesome. Churches are supposed to be positive settings with everyone smiling and bringing fellowship. But in Jorge’s perspective he feels as though they look down upon him because he is there to clean and not to worship.
“What they say must be true: I am smart, but I have a bad attitude.”
So maybe the ‘Church folk’ do not like him, maybe they have not brought forth the effort to treat him like a person, to them he is just "Jorge the janitor."
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Maybe it is one of those big enterprise industrialized church the kind that is more of a place of business rather than a small town church. People come and go and don't have time for themselves let alone poor Jorge, which is probably not even his name.
ReplyDeleteI go to a church like the one lleidy ivelisse speaks of, fellowship church, and i greet the jainators with a smile and so do many of my other friends and we always tell them thank you for what they do.
ReplyDeleteLearn how to spell Janitor, the title of their profession. It's respectful, plus why are you defending yourself after reading the poem, are you guilty of being prejudice?
DeleteLearn how to spell Janitor, the title of their profession. It's respectful, plus why are you defending yourself after reading the poem, are you guilty of being prejudice?
Delete