BIO
Isa Guzman is a TITERE poet from Los Sures, Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Dedicating their time to exploring the traumas and hardships of the Puerto Rican community and society at large, their work has been featured in several magazines and anthologies, such as: The Bridge (Brooklyn Poets), The Acentos Review, The Casita Grande Lounge, The Good Men Project, and The Other Side of Violet. Currently pursuing their MFA at Brooklyn College. They are also working toward their first collection of poems & first exhibition of visual art. You can also hear them speak on the subject of masculinity and the Puerto Rican community on the podcast, Pan Con Titeres.
Yo
siempre camino por esta colina steep
from Ceiba Sur to Juncos
dodging
vacant cars & hollowed homes
dodging
dogs with vacant eyes & dried
chicken
blood bark
dodging
petrified landslides of vacant debris
&
weathered boulders scaled in vine
all the way down the 934
to carretera
198 to Ralphie’s warehouse
quien
vende un jug de Pepsi for 79 cents
warm
moonlight cold sun light
y
an unlearning of the future
Yo
compro una botella de agua
for
the price of my liver
&
a bouquet of chicken feet
make
my way toward the bridge
over the Rio Valenciano where a herd
of mules stampede beneath the calm
green brown orange paint currents
iguanas
hang from powerlines
praying
for storms of ligartijos
there
are bodies hiding
everywhere evasive of any
eye
or want inert in an aura
wholly
ghost
&
I make my path toward
the stony muslos del pueblo
in its pastel blood & eroded
cement pregnant with
floor
tiles a century old & barely
tarnished
which
led me past imagined people
sleeping
in the doorways
de
tiendas cerradas
which
led me to the Cementerio Minicipal Viejo
a hill with tombs for teeth
I
abandon my bouquet
on
the unmarked grave
de
una bruja watch a swarm
of
fire ants carry it away
from the hill I feel bomba thumping from waves of steam
burnt
coffee y dulce de leche
incrust
the hot air down alleyways
y
mas vacant lots y mas vacant homes
y me pierdo en el pensamiento
until I ask for directions
from a man named Pello
who looks a lot like my
father
as he directs
me toward the town square
where
under steepled gaze of
Inmaculada
Concepción
I expect to witness
una
explosión
instead
veo un
hombre
lying
in a gazebo
with a
wound
the
size of a mouth
in
the shape of a carambola
y
el color de wrecked fruit
of
acerola cherries
or
pitahaya
or
pomarosa
a
mouth mouthing for
another
dollar
y yo miro y yo miro y yo miro until the plaza stares back