Small Talk After A Reading in Texas: A Haitian Massacre
Pain Scale: 8
I spoke in foreign tongues in a dimly
lit
space & felt my throat tremble with
regret
as the teeth of a country I cannot
claim
threatened to peel back my skin and
leave me to rot.
I moistened my mouth with the bitter
& told you
of haiti & trujillo. I spat seeds
of brown &
black spirits drifting along
appropriated borders
to watch them grow. like coarse skin
& pulp
I sifted my narratives through the
white paper
funnel of your privilege and watched it
dissolve.
my words leaked like punctured mangoes
onto parchment paper and I left them
dripping & sticky sweet naked on a
stage
for your public consumption and greed.
then at the end of the reading you paid
only with time to feed off, you
approached
my table and recognition sauntered
across your
powdery face. the haitian massacre of
1937 reminded you
of a mammie you had as a child.
a woman who
bathed you like a mother. dark arms
rocked chairs
on a porch & conjured songs of a
french island you knew
from a map. she left you tart like
lemonade soaked
in the mud of a southern texas town
plantation & you finally
found her in my words again. like the
heat, you felt
it necessary to warm me with her memory
so
I forged my name on a story of a life I
once knew
misspelled yours and signed it
with love
Counting Beads
-para mi familia Rosario
Our father who art in heaven/hallowed be thy name…
My name is an amen
at funerals
for weeping women
in the belly of starving children
twisted in the palms
of priests & nuns
choked by knuckles
sweaty against the pulse of a chest
the heat of sin
singes fingertips
Padre nuestro que estas en cielo/santificado sea tu nombre…
In Texas the school secretary
laughs and reduces my apellido
to a first name
My silence anoints her with fear
her eyes swallow full of grace
I’m sorry
she presses & folds her
knees
into the concrete pews of her gut
to wash my amen from her
tongue
now and at the hour of her death
Our father who art in heaven/hallowed be thy name…
I say penance
& curse the nurse Maria
who scoffs and says
Rosario, como la criada
de la casa del patron
the help of your Father’s house
there to wash your
dishes, your clothes,
your children & your sins
but I am not built for that
kind of cleansing
Padre nuestro que estas en cielo/santificado sea tu nombre…..
The taste of my name’s holy
spirit
blesses gums like a mouthful of glass ground to dust
I hang on a cross round the
neck of my rearview mirror
for protection against every evil
I count each tresspass like a
prayer of beads on a rosary
one
by
one
by
one
Our father who art
in heaven/hallowed be thy name…..
Padre nuestro que
estas en cielo/santificado sea tu nombre…..
Amen
my
name
Amen
my
name
Amen
my
name
Amen
my
name
Amen
my
name
Outsourced: A Love Song
-For G.S.
A Sikh man let me taste him
once. Let me scar his flesh
with touch & outsource his love to the highest possible
bidder.
Let his uncut braided
conversations wrap around my waist
and hold me like a song. Felt holy in the brown of his eyes
& in the swallow of his
neck. Beneath a chest of hairs I let
a Benghra rhythm keep our hearts in sync. We gathered our youth
like drum sticks in the
unsteady grips of our fingers & let
a tempo beat us immortal. We puffed & ate & drank desire
with gentrified tongues. Let
crystallized pipes swirl with sheets
of smoke that staccatoed into radio speakers where we let
ourselves
forget. As I strummed his Urdu song along the strings
of my Spanish
hair we translated stares but never the music. We let years
dance inside the rythym of an impossible
destiny. Betrothed
only
to the moment, I let a Sikh man love me once.