Two Poems
Grifería: Clemente Responds to Luis Palés Matos
![BioPic[1]](_Media/biopic1_med_hr.jpeg)
BIO
Malcolm Friend is a poet originally from the Rainier Beach neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. He received his BA from Vanderbilt University, where he was the 2014 recipient of the Merrill Moore Prize for Poetry, and is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Pittsburgh. He is also a 2014 recipient of a Talbot International Award for Writing. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in publications such as La Respuesta magazine, the Fjords Review’s Black American Edition, Alicante’s Información, fields magazine, The Acentos Review, Pretty Owl Poetry, and elsewhere.
“Yo soy niche, / orgulloso de mis raíces / de tener mucha bemba y grandes narices”
—Tego Calderón, “Loíza”
Los negros bailan, bailan, bailan
ante la fogata encendida.
Black people dance
to burning effigies
in the darkness,
orange flames flicker-flirting
with the sky’s black skin,
with our black skin.
We must all dance,
ancestral rhythms pulsing
through fango-mud-bound bodies.
Ñam-ñam
todos somos.
But what of me?
Los negros bailan, bailan, bailan
ante la fogata encendida.
Jazz, blues,
calypso, rumba,
bomba and plena—
we dance, dance, dance,
bodies swaying back and forth
with Caribbean waves,
cinnamon-melaza mirrors
to river of black,
the pez de plata moon
silver fish bearing witness
to this pasa,
this tuntún,
it’s eye burning bright
as the fire it observes:
tum-cutum, tum-cutum, indeed—
ba-doom, ba-doom—
but what of my dance?
¿Si ñam-ñam
yo no soy?
Los negros bailan, bailan, bailan
ante la fogata encendida.
I do not dance
with effigies.
Son of the cane cutter,
I have seen the machete
smiling with sunlight
as it swings and slices;
pelotero-ballplayer,
my bat swings
no rhythmic ancestral motion,
but still
in step with Caribbean waves,
in step
with the pez de plata moon,
silver fish swimming
through the sky’s black skin,
through my black skin,
my bomba-calypso-blues.
Is my tuntún
too off beat?
Was my body not sculpted
from mud,
fashioned with the same sediment
seeping from earth?
Am I not
allowed to dance?
Lamento en bolero (Clemente’s Pain)
for Cheo Feliciano and Michael Friend
“For Clemente, those [salsa] moves were too fast, undignified, not cool enough, and he wasn’t any good at them. He liked the Boleros, the slow dances.”
—David Maraniss, Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball’s Last Hero
ay, que cansancio de todo
de seguir esperando
Vic says
I can’t dance salsa,
tells people
it’s too fast:
“Ooh, baby.
Roberto dancing salsa?”
Tells people I got them piernas
made of piedra.
Says I’m too stoic,
too static to feel
enclosed lightning
sounding trumpets.
Says I’m too cool
for congas—
that’s why I dance bolero.
He’s wrong.
ay, se acabó la esperanza
se perdió la confianza
Forget about
shifting hips
and frenetic feet.
Bolero
lets my limbs
hang languid,
brings my electric movement
to stasis.
I languish
to a bolero-man’s
croon
Bolero is pinballing disk
in my back—
pang as it pops
in and out of place;
it’s the pinch in my neck
when I face pitchers,
the strain as my shoulder
drags heavy lumbered bat
across the plate;
it’s the accusation
that I’m faking it all.
Bolero is every shot
at my accent
in the Pittsburgh papers:
“I hit many
what you call
‘bad bol,’”
“We have good speerit
on Pirates thees’ year,”
“I have friend
in Puerto Rica.”
Bolero
is leaving Puerto Rico,
trading the blue
of the Caribbean
for the blues
of not having the words
to describe it.
Cántame,
cantante del bolero.
Que sigas trovando.
Bolero-man,
I’ll dance,
your song,
feet dragging on pace
to your slow cadence,
if only because
your throat forces out
mirror reflecting my pain:
ay, que cansancio en el alma
de esperar tu regreso
cansancio