After the Puerto Rican Day Parade
It all started
with a fight
like most
history lessons do
Men clad in a
musky scent of loss
donned
patriot’s colors and not much else
Parades in New
York can be mile wide bar fights—
depending on
the weather
If you got
enough sun in your skin
having pride is
a riot—
¡Despierta, borinqueño
que han dado la señal!
¡Despierta de ese sueño
que es hora de luchar!
Arise, boricua!
The
call to arms has sounded!
Awake
from the slumber,
it
is time to fight!
Explosions always start with cocktails or malta
Why can’t the Puerto Ricans just
enjoy their parade
do they have to act like
animals?
said three fifths a man soon to be ghost
A small girl
made of paper crumbles
Her mother nods
in disgust,
tries to
console the child—
unfold her fear
They say privilege is a veil
Puerto Ricans
thirst for acceptance
We—
an isle with
less people than Manhattan
neither country
nor nation
Our existence
is a fist
le dará el machete
su libertad…
le dará el machete
su libertad.
the machete will give him
his
liberty,
the
machete will give him
his
liberty.
The boys in
blue hear the cries of the crumbling paper people
and try to turn
my brothers’ faces into flags
The patriots just laugh
What
is Fear to the lost—
those
born fighting
We will claim any territory we can
This
is only one battle—
one
loss
We too, will fight to be free
Vámonos, borinqueños,
vámonos ya,
que nos espera ansiosa,
ansiosa la libertad.
¡La libertad, la libertad!
Come on, Borinquen,
Let's
go,
We
wait anxiously,
Anxious
freedom.
Freedom,
freedom![1]
[1] Lyrics from the original Puerto Rican National Anthem
“How will you have prepared for
your death?”
After
Bhanu Khapil
My brother smiles craters into my chest. He reminds me that the body is both strong and vulnerable. After losing a game of monsters I lie limp across the living room floor and he pretends to weep over my slain body. Trying my best not to laugh, I pop up when I feel his tears grazes my skin. I look into him and ask,
“What happened?”
I thought I killed you
“We were just playing pretend!”
I smile and hold him until he shakes off the trauma. We never speak about what it means to die because dead is a word heavier than either of our mouths can handle.
A student today asks me what it means to be vulnerable.
Broken smiles
are contagious
His body is too
young to be corpse—
There are dead
people sitting with me on the train as I write this.
Fear is a cold
that seeps through to the marrow.
BIO
Ashley 'Ajay' Johnson is a 21 year old Bronx
-Bred writer and tea enthusiast. In a world where people rather spend
time fighting against love than looking for it, a young cyborg by way of
the Bronx is trying to fashion the romance back into our lives where it
belongs: neatly in our shirt pockets.