When My Husband Dies, I Freeze in Time
BIO
Shyanne Figueroa Bennett is a Brooklyn poet with roots in Panama, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico. Currently, she is an MFA candidate at Columbia University, where she is a recipient of a Chair’s Fellowship and a Creative Writing Teaching Fellowship.
IG: @shyanne.bennett
“When My Husband Dies, I Freeze in Time” was originally published in Queen Mob’s Teahouse. The remaining two poems are additions published for the first time here.
A fly lands on my eye. I do not blink.
July 1967, sweat seals me
to this couch. Two weeks
swallowed by waves, a nest
in a Japanese cargo ship.
Colón to Brooklyn. I leave
adorned: bracelet of daughter’s caress,
necklace of baby boy’s breath.
With factory smoke I build myself
a man. Name him Julio. Tostón
to his mouth. Nipple sucked
and licked. My body is a curve
for hook-mouth children.
One cannot escape the shadow
of his hand laid heavy—no soothing
drunken words for comfort,
so soon begins the fade
till two eyes float in a mass
heaving. My children
wail.
Chant. Dance in
circles.
The middle one reaches
for what may be a hand,
whispers to what
may be her mother:
He left. We will say
he
died in Puerto Rico.
This is to Certify That
You
are torn
status
a
type of subject
not returning.
You
are a port
a sex
a number
12,336,839 times
by law
by passport
by visa.
A
condition old as nation
on
any day, any year.
You
are any immigrant
an absence
an exclusion
a temporary failure
in
the form of a natural current.
On the Topic of the Panama Canal
“We stole it fair and square.”
-U.S. Senator 1976
Stole
it. Fair. Stolen
fairness.
Stole we.
We
it stolen. Stolen it. We
quarried
stone. We it.
We
far. No room.
Us
old in stone. Our stolen
oldest
and little ones, too.
No
air. No fed dawn.
We
sewed to stone,
set
fire and strewn.
Laid
east and west
us
lead drowned souls.
Dare
our undead wails
rattle
rafters.
Dare
our undead wails
warn new
toilers.
Dare
our undead wails
deafen roars of
nefarious towers