Courtyard Of Clothesline Angel Hill Analysis

Tim Walberg once said “Americans are hard working innovative, proud people who want bad government policies and high taxes to get out of the way so they can take care of their families and pursue their dream.” We live in a world where all we want is to be able to have sustainability and purpose for ourselves. We all our constantly striving and in some cases fighting for the ‘American Dream’ of a successful occupation, roof over our heads and a family. However, is our ability to believe enough to guide us? In today’s society we don’t have the most supportive government when it comes to things such as lower taxes, housing for the homeless and educating the youth. The poem “Courtyard of Clothesline”, Angel Hill by Orlando Ricardo Menes, represents

Revealing what it truly means to live in a corrupt government where poverty and scarcity is uncontrollable. In particular, poverty in Angel Hill is exhibited as ‘more numerous than bristles on a pig’(642). The metaphor that hairs on a pig are so scarce portraying the amount of times they must manage for themselves do to the shortages. The women are constantly trying to fight with proving sustenance for themselves and providing solutions to things that aren’t quite everyday problems. For instance, Menes throws at us the heartbreaking moments of what it means to have no ‘meat’ or no ‘soaps’(642). These women of Angel Hill must constantly be crafty in this situation to make due with the shortages and find tricks to get things done for themselves without their government providing help. These desperate individuals are continuously looked down upon like filth and waste of human kind. Although, this is not an experience I have ever experienced for myself ‘more than 600,000 American are homeless on any given night’ (Thinkprogress.org).Waking up every day not knowing if they will go hungry or if anyone will even give them any form of support because they are looked down as scum. More than half of them are still left without a bed to sleep every night. Something our government should be at least

The poem brings a cautionary tone of the instruments in the window to be a representation of a ghostly figure of a salsa band (522). The instruments are described as corpses in a morgue with toe tags that show their prices of the given up instruments. Espada brings awareness about how these instruments being given away represent a death of this music because they were sold off. The instruments become a victim to their selling and a death of their dream of music is made. This connects back to ‘Courtyard of Clothesline’ by using the sense of one’s awareness to understand the importance of one’s faith and sustenance. The women of Angel Hill are a symbol of the constant struggle, but the held belief and trust that the scarcity will go away so they must survive this dark time. The instruments and angels are both symbols of their awareness of our dreams and how society can make or break them. The instruments were symbols of death; not of these people but the death of their belief for their music world. The angels represent not only the individuals themselves that live in this place, but also a sense of trust in a higher power to bring the ‘American Dream’ to Angel Hill. In this case, the people of Angel Hill pray to the spirits for the long drought but all they receive in return is the ‘angels whisper’