Despierta Borinquen
Despierta Borinqueño que han dado la señal
pero aún con ojos abiertos
dormimos despiertos
caminamos
encadenadas nuestras manos
a señal mal dada
a señal maldita
a señal suscrita
al poder
BIO
Ana Portnoy Brimmer is a poet and performer, creative nonfiction writer, artivist, and Master’s student of Literature at the Department of English of the University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras. She is currently the Assistant Editor of Tonguas Magazine and a freelance writer for Migo IQ and La Pupila. She has presented her work both locally and internationally, having performed in Puerto Rico, Mexico, New York, in conferences and featured poetry readings, such as El Primer Encuentro Internacional sobre Pensamiento Crítico en el Caribe Insular and Barrio Poetix-at La Marqueta, in El Barrio. She is an Under The Volcano Fellow and a Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation Fellow. Her work has been published in Sábanas Magazine and in a Tonguas Magazine special collection, is forthcoming in Moko Magazine, and is being considered for publication in a number of other literary magazines. Ana employs poetry as a tool for activism, advocating against the depoliticization of poetry and art, and believing in poetry as a community consolidator and as socially-committed. Ana is the daughter of Mexican-Jewish immigrants, she was born in New York, but was raised, and currently lives, in Puerto Rico, all of which engendered her poetic alias, La MexiRican.
eyes blinking away reality
sleeping on goose feather
and human leather
pillows
keeping closed our windows
to the poet’s tongue
to the nation
whose war cry has been sung
Despierta de ese sueño que es hora de luchar
por sueño que no se eleva
por sueño que sueño se queda
a dream with our hostage hands to blow
up
a dream from which we have to wake up
A
ese llamar patriótico, no arde tu corazón?
Ven,
nos será simpático el ruido del cañón
que nos da en la cara
cañón de tierra firme que nos dispara
y la tierra debajo de nuestros pies
se nos resbala
el ruido simpático nos apuñala
heart burning
if only it were liberty
it was concerning
blows from the truth
battered and blindly
we keep returning
to a lie
Nosotros
queremos la libertad
y
nuestro machete nos la dará
Machete oxidado
machete por el poder confiscado
machete por su poder confiscado
por ser el legado
el hijo abandonado
de la libertad
comrade
wanting is no longer enough
it is our sleeves we have to cuff
our bodies sharpen
our mouths awaken
our eyes unburden
a human machete fighting
for a freedom uncertain
Vámonos
Borinqueño, vámonos ya
que
nos espera ansiosa, ansiosa la libertad
y nos sigue esperando y nos sigue
esperando y nos
sigue
esperando
wake up
despierta Borinquen