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Pedro Pietri

By Ben Chitty

We regret to report the death of longtime friend and sometime member Pedro Pietri, "El Reverendo" and "Spanglish Metaphor Consultant," member of the Latin Insomniacs Motorcycle Club Without Motorcycles, Inc. — writer, poet and dramatist of the Puerto Rican diaspora, on Wednesday, March 3, 2004. The cause of death was stomach cancer, the consequence of exposure to Agent Orange. He was 59.

He was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, was raised in Harlem in New York City, was drafted into the Army in 1966 and served in Vietnam with a light infantry unit. Honorably discharged in 1968, he returned to New York and to writing, which he began as a student at Harlem High.

He first read his most famous work — "Puerto Rican Obituary" — in 1969 in a church seized by the Young Lords. The epic was published in 1973. Meanwhile he helped start the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, where the distinctive speech of New York puertoriquenos was hammered into poems and plays and performed live in what became known as "slams," and where he put on his own first play, "Jesus is Leaving." His poems were extensively anthologized, his plays widely performed, his advice and encouragement often solicited and amply donated.

He was active in the struggle for AIDS education and treatment. He helped start El Puerto Rican Embassy, a "state of mind" free of colonial domination, with its own passports (recognized mainly by Cuba). In an interview a month before he died, he replied to a question: "What do I think about the war in Iraq? I don't think about it, because the war never ended ... This is a war that's been going on since the invasion of North America."

Pedro Pietri always wore black. Sometimes he said he did this because he had to go to so many funerals — his grandfather killed himself, and two of his four brothers died young. But more often he described his fashion statement in political terms: "I realized who the real enemy was, and it was not the Viet Cong in their black pajamas, but the mercenaries who invaded their country. This is in mourning for that person who died in Vietnam."

Telephone Booth Number 905 1/2

woke up this morning
feeling excellent,
picked up the telephone
dialed the number of
my equal opportunity employer
to inform him I will not
be in to work today.

"Are you feeling sick?"
the boss asked me

"No Sir," I replied:
"I am feeling too good
to report to work today.
If I feel sick tomorrow
I will come in early!"

Pedro Pietri. El Reverendo. Presente.