midtown manhattan

I wanted to get out of the small house built before my parents were alive, between mountain tops in the lush green valley.

I wanted to live somewhere different, where cellphone reception was real.

I wanted to compete in sweepstakes promoting lifetime supplies of something terrible. Sugar stamped with the words “No purchase necessary. Void in Puerto Rico”.

I wanted to be a big fish in a big pond.

I wanted to be seen.

To look up from my coffee at a corner café, catching the eye of a stranger who moved too slow to hide their recognition. Knowing where I was from, even though my house didn’t have a street address and packages couldn’t make their way to the doorstep half the time.

I got what I wanted. Sort of.

I went to the big city.

I lived in the brick building with the fire escape outside my window.

I went to the school with the fancy name you always see in the movies about small-town kids who move to the big city to go to the school with the fancy name.

I got the job in the metal tower.

Scraping the sky. Thousands of faces encased in glass boxes. Each window its own fishbowl.

I learned to walk at the pace of people I would never again walk next to, ignoring my pulse.

I lost the color brown.

Now I’m the color of weak English tea on a bad day, acne scars shining on my cheeks.

I wanted to go somewhere to feel more like myself.

Now I wonder if I’ll ever feel like I did when I sat underneath raindrops on a warm afternoon. The trees shaking.

Counting the days until I could go to the city with the tall buildings where my walk matched my heart beat.

the fall

The x-ray shows my spine is curved.

Turning to the right then smoothing back left,

As if carefully avoiding tripping over a cat

Or lightly stepping around a small puddle.

It’s sort of cute.

When did this happen?

Narrow stairs and the idea of a banister.

My old Bushwick basement apartment.

I slipped and fell a few times.

The first time I was drunk.

Karaoke interrupted with news of a flood,

Everything I owned soaked.

The backyard was a graveyard of paperbacks.

I peered down the stairs and the floor shimmered.

I stepped, then slipped.

My arms smacking the cheap wood, grabbing at nothing.

My heart in my throat.

I looked up at the broken sky and couldn’t tell

What were tears and what was rain.

Paint peeled off the walls,

Revealing layers of off-white.

The brittle bones of a house 

Built to be forgotten.

Would there be a bruise tomorrow?

He flips the switch and it’s gone.

I bend and try to feel 

where I went off-center.

As I pick up my things, I think of home.

Afternoons laying on the shore,

Waves lapping up my legs,

The cold water realer than anything else.

The sand would shape around me, 

a perfect fit and feeling.

I walk towards the train, and stop to remember

A time when falling didn’t seem so bad. 

isla del encanto

La Isla del Encanto

La Isla del Espanto

Soñando con alcanzar algo mas allá que un atardecer

Playas cubiertas en latas de medalla y copias del Nuevo Día

Pero la cerveza esta bien fría

Así que a quien le importa si mis pies se cortan cuando camino descalza

Un país hecho de arena, cultivado en sangre

Con tantas curvas y yo sin frenos

Y las calles muertas de hambre

Las calles gritan con sed

No hay nada que beber

Lo único para tragar son mentiras políticas disfrazadas como deseos en velas de huracán

Quien cree en milagros

Mejor cree en el trago

Mejor usar tu energía para pasar un buen rato

porque ya sabes que vienen las parrandas navideñas y si no sonríes no sabes na

No sabes na

No sabes na

No sabes na de la esclavización del pueblo puertorriqueño que continua hoy en día a mano del americano rico racista

No sabes na

receta boricua

Monday, May 6, 2019

9:02 PM

I am sand and salt

I am cracked and crumbled seashells

Memories broken by wind and water

Dust that trickles from fingers

Stuck under toe nails

Crunching between crooked teeth long after the day is dark

I am distilled

From spirits

Ancestors stained golden brown by setting suns

Whose bodies fertilized the ground

For men who never stopped to listen

When they said Bienvenidos

Which means Welcome

Handshakes turning babies into slaves

For men who sold ideas and collected futures

I am

Parts cobbled together

Hips made from hillsides

Skin made of palm trees

Blood and bone like rum and coconut

Wandering barefoot

To feel myself

Cracked and crumbled

Where water ends

And I begin

homesick

I close my eyes

The world becomes the sound of coquis

Which can't survive anywhere outside of the 110 by 40 miles I call home

Except for the time they managed to turn up in Hawaii

But that was definitely an accident

They sing to each other

With a song so bright and clear that it onomatopoeically named them

Which is sweet in tree frogs

But not in people

Or else I would be called

All the sounds that I make in the morning when my alarm goes off

Coquis sing loudest when the rain has just fallen

And the air is crisp and wet

In an effort to find their mates

Which is a much more appealing cat call than

Ey Yo Ma, if you ask me.

Their songs are all subtle

Playing in the background to television episodes, arguments, gentle sleep

But once one gets started, they all sing

So the sweet subtle song becomes a wave once you notice it

And then, you can't not notice it because it's everything

I close my eyes and think of home

I think of barefoot walks to my grandmother's house

Of sweet coffee with milk and fresh bread

Of dancing to music as the radio plays and my dad butchers the lyrics

Of my mom brushing my hair as I fall asleep to the sounds of the coquis

I close my eyes and think of home

And the silence is deafening

in harmony

The salty taste of arroz con gandules, carne vieja and a slice of cold aguacate.

The daytime soap opera plays in the background as I wait for mami to leave work and get me.

My grandma sings hymns softly while my grandpa looks out the window.

A chorus of bird songs accompany Grandma’s melody.

A toddler, I sit on the chilly tile floor, preferring this to the sofa with the plastic.

Grandpa was always so quiet; Grandma was loud and commanding.

They were perfectly in harmony as they rocked in their chairs, and I daydreamed and loved them.

el amor es

The salty taste of arroz con gandules, carne vieja, with a slice of cold aguacate.

Holding hands while the daytime novela played in the background, waiting for Mami to come home and get me.

She sings himnos under her breath while he looks out the window, a chorus of bird songs accompanying her melody.

I sit on the chilly tile floor, preferring this to the sofa with the plastic on it.

He was always so quiet.

Her voice always loud and commanding.

They were perfectly in harmony somehow as they rocked in their chairs, while I daydreamed and loved them.

thoughts on a nation

I was really disappointed by the fucking election.

A man who doesn’t like women, who really loves his erection.

A person seriously diluted about building a wall.

A Humpty Dumpty who can’t imagine how he’s gonna fall.

It’s…constant repetition of his unholy mission

Praising his acquisitions…

And promoting white privilege.

Monetary gain, surpass appropriation pain

The more the country changes, more it stays the same.

Had a chance to make a difference, break through the glass ceiling.

Bring in someone with hands we need to practice some healing.

Instead of progress and creation, we decided on fear

Clinging to antiquated notions of an enemy near.

Dragging morality razor blades across the flesh You praise

Claiming we now exist in bliss in a pro-melanin haze

But the fact of mass hysteria cannot be denied

And the majority rejected the things she could provide.

See, now the proof is in the papers

We see collective screaming

Of a nation under God chastised for ever believing

That we had grown up past the time of hate, irrational rage

Surrounded by our blurry visions and locked  up in a cage

Built on the backs of those before us, people hoping for life

Instead of fulfilling vows, we got a mail-order wife.

Now the streets are filled with madness

A state of confusion, drawing conclusions based on facts and figures

that can’t be proven

The more we struggle with the hate and fear called everyday life

The more the men who carry power twist the double-edged knife.

Stories about grabbing bodies as if they were free samples

And comments about how his daughter’s figure’s always been ample

And anti-color propaganda painting walls with graffiti

And one-percenters telling begging masses not to be greedy.

And threats of physical removal from the patriot ground

If multiple identifying documents can’t be found.

And screaming faces yelling at the voiceless they should be silent

And clenching fists insisting that the powerless not be violent.

I can’t begin to think of lessons we can pull from disaster

The chains are being handed over to this elected master

Congratulations to the land of freedom if you are white

It’s easy to exist is bliss after you’ve traded your sight.

anxiety lovelove anxiety

tightened chest

fingers sweat

heart palpitations repeat anxiety iterations

spiraling feeling of doubt exploding into silent shouting

daytime nighttime filled with why

tasting salted tears on tips of tongues as backlogged feeling rise up into being

unsure of landing pages

searches leading to deadened facial expressions

reliving all the moments of wondering why you were ever put in this position in the first place

i can't help falling in...

i hate ruminating over hypotheticals

I hate ruminating over hypotheticals

Pondering incomplete mental wanderings

Decision making based on illogical step taking

Which result in neither successes nor progress

 

I hate ruminating over hypotheticals

Energy drains

Dexterity exercises exhaust the brain

Clawing up seamless walls

Losing fingertip tenderness and life to duress

Prose that supposes there are solutions to riddles that were never posed

Loss as a result of incorrect deductions that decisions are as predictable as disappointment

Frustrations birthed from alternate timelines lived by people who never knew what you meant in the first place

I hate ruminating over hypotheticals

for nicole l.