Forged In Fire

our boiling pot always-raging,
ever-burning over this open fire,
este fuego with its roaring flames,
its orange, yellow fingers stretching up
into these angry, cold, gray skies across
this angry, strange, new land, expanding
with the urgency of freedom, hungry
for oxygen, este fuego always cooking
with the fire on high, scorching
the bottom of the pot as it bubbles
over, splashing and agonizando like
chains melting into metal
                                corroded
                                skin blistering under the heat
                                quemándonos
in a stew of black bodies
and brown bodies
of full bellies—not the bloated bellies
of satisfaction, but the bloated bellies
of colonial ships that for centuries
ate up men, women, and children
across that vast Atlantic voyage,
overwrought and overloaded
overstuffed with the souls of the stolen—millions stolen
killed or drowned—bought, sold, and broken
             severed from their majestic African queens
             and kings—these warriors, farmers, fishermen, torn
             from Obatalá, Shangó, Oshún y Yemayá
all cut down, peeled, chunked, or diced
into this, our boiling pot
quemándonos—derramándonos
from centuries under that whip, under that sun, under their boot
                              and cruelty y nosotros su propiedad
                              agonizando y quemándonos
but when they say
a watched pot never boils, I say
we’ve watched ours boil and burn—we see it spilling
over with rabid rage and at times die down to an agonizing
patient simmer of hope because we know our boiling pot
                      has been burning in the flames of struggle,
                      pain, and hunger, but not for food, but rather
                      freedom, identity, y autosuficiencia
and we know we will survive
because we, too, were forged in fire

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Starved for My Rightful Place

the writer in me, that wandering
poet who wanders but is not lost,
is starved for her rightful place

the immigrant in me is too and the “other” me, the one
that doesn’t belong because she is from somewhere else
                    always fragmented
                    always split in three
                    spanish, spanglish, english

she consults the experts, scholars, MLA style, all the styles
but they all seem to agree non-English words must be
            italicized
            because my words are not part of the relevant dialect

            so my spanish gets italicized
            deflated, autocorrected, while I extend every courtesy
            to the reader—warning them something other than English
            has happened to their page

                    this gatekeeping
                               undemocratizes
                               unemancipates
                               and underrates
            the way we share words
            the way we see each other
            by slanting us

italicize they say
            let readers know yours are those “strange” words
            the ones full of “foreignness” and “otherness”

                             rather than the ones
                             that have a rightful place in the text
but I
will not
be slanted
I
will not
be italicized 

----------------------------------------------- // ---------------------------------------------------------

 A Hunger for Home

I’ve always lived
In Cuba—even when the infinitude y la distancia kept me
from la Habana, from my birthplace on that wet April day
when the storm that threatened us, died over the peaks of
                      La Loma de Santa Bárbara—¡Gracias a Changó!

I’ve always lived
In Cuba—where my tiny lungs took their first breath
and inhaled the entire island—its air painting my soul
with colores de mi tierra como el azul del cielo, la libertad
y el rojo de nuestra revolución, con el verde de sus palmares
all the colors del arcoíris saturated
in sweat & hunger & sugar cane, saturated in all
the colors of love & pride en una patria consagrada
                       en una patria reforzada por las flores de Martí
                       que cultivó sus rosas blancas para ti y para mí.

I’ve always lived
In Cuba—but every inhale brings an exhale and when my life
finally exhaled it tossed me, at seven, into the belly of a leaky vessel
and its one-hundred forty-seven souls on board all in the name
of a false freedom we would never find on distant shores
as we thrashed in the shark-infested waters
on a capsizing boat en el Caribe watching my home disappear
                       into the golden horizon—its light too far to reach
                       and too close to let it go.

         I’ve always lived
         In Cuba—through my first bitter winter in the cold confinement
         of a Navy barracks somewhere in a place
          they called Pennsylvania—named after
                       a hero not my own whose Quaker beliefs
                       might someday grant me mercy—asylum.

I’ve always lived
In Cuba—even during the stifling summer of ’81 hanging out of wrought-iron
fire escapes for a taste of oxygen and humanity—escaping the oppressive innards
of our Washington Heights tenement the year I discovered snow wasn’t soft or white
but wet and gray and painful when the crystals burn your hands until you cry
for the warmth of a tamarindo pod off the tree that makes fingers all sticky
                        with its bittersweet tropical goodness—longing for Cuba’s
                        tropical heat, politics, its cigars, azúcar y café.

I’ve always lived
In Cuba—and got a taste of home in Guayanilla with its one-road-in
one-road-out and its single bodega, park, and gas station, all dancing
to the rhythm of the trickling waters of El Río de Guayanilla
crawling to Bahía Tallaboa on the southern coast of Puerto Rico—a zip code
so much like my own I didn’t want to leave its ocean breezes, sugar cane fields
y arroz con guandules—y las Navidades con sus parrandas y trullas
                        con sus maracas, güiros, and guitarras siempre cantando canciones
                        con el corazón abierto y lleno de esperanza.

I’ve always lived
In Cuba—as we sunk into the concrete tree-lined streets
of Miami and Cuba came rushing back in a whirlwind of familiar
tropical heat, heated politics, cigars, azúcar y café y las botánicas
a kaleidoscope of velas y santos & African deities each guaranteeing
to cure and the bakery’s sweet pastelitos de guayaba, flaky pastries
covered in almíbar for a sugar crunch that sticks to the roof of your mouth
and at night, the violetas splashed after a bath smelling of birth & inocencia.

          The sleepless nights hijacked by pounding dress shoes & heels across
          the city’s salsa dance floors of bodies drenched in passion and delirio,
          sweat & hope and the electrifying neon of dreams in a city on a beach
          along a wayward river that empties into the Caribbean,
          its waters leading back to an island of historic
                                          slave ports, sugar plantations, endless suffering
                                          and everlasting hunger & hope. Home.

I’ve always lived
In Cuba—even now surrounded by mountains born of Pele’s fire I am still
an island girl embraced by the aloha of the Rainbow state anchored
by its graceful palms and radiant flamboyant reds by emerald-winged parakeets
cousins of their Cuban counterparts by cobalt blues and sapphire greens & jagged
coastlines with white sandy beaches this volcanic paradise sings me daily love songs
on the warm breezes it whispers of a place I call home—that long ago place
                    where I once took my first breath
                    and inhaled an island, every tropical heat, all its heated politics,
                    its cigars, azúcar y café so my Cuba could thrash in my veins,
                    so that it can whisper a nostalgic final cry from my deathbed
                    of longing, pride, and truth, and the truth is that I’ve always lived
                                              in Cuba, and I’ve always lived in Cuba,
                                              because Cuba is the zip code of my heart.