Amy Alvarez 

Our Lady of the Cafeteria

Praise her hairnet, her steam-smudged
eyeliner, bronzed highlights. Praise her
tongs that hold up breaded fish as wrinkle-
nosed kids ask what is that?

Praise her response: it’s fish, ho-nay, it’s good
for you. Praise her ho-nay, what she called
each of us, ensuring we had a daily dose
of sweetness. Praise her unplaceable
olive skin and accent—praise her mouth
that likely tasted and knew fish and honey
in more tongues than we knew existed.

Praise the work of her hands: sandwiches
sold to those of us who waited for her line
to open up so we could hear her hon-ay,
could be reminded of our own immigrant
mothers and grandmothers who had done,
who were doing this work. Praise our child
mouths that might repeat her incantation:
it’s fish, it’s good for you to get that one girl
Danielle to eat anything that wasn’t a soggy
French fry covered in ketchup.

Praise her for holding us up, for seeing our
inner honey, even at that bitter age. Praise
all the hair-netted ones who give sustenance
to children, who told and tell us over and over:
it’s good
for you it’s
good for you
it’s good
for you

Amy M. Alvarez is the author of the poetry collection Makeshift Altar (2024) and the co-editor of Essential Voices: A COVID-19 Anthology (2023). Her poetry has appeared in Ploughshares, The Missouri Review, Best New Poets, Alaska Quarterly Review, Poetry Foundation, Colorado Review, and elsewhere. She has been awarded fellowships from CantoMundo, VONA, Macondo, the Virginia Creative Arts Center, and the Furious Flower Poetry Center. In 2022, she was inducted as an Affrilachian Poet. Amy was born in New York City to Jamaican and Puerto Rican parents. She has previously taught at high schools in the Bronx, New York, and Boston, Massachusetts, and at West Virginia University. She currently teaches at Boston College.