None on Friday, Two on Saturday

As always, the titles are links to learn more about the poets and their poems.

Say What?
Could you please, Pleeeeeeeeeeease repeat
Did you say: Molleta?
Prieta?
Morena?
Ohh African!
Hmmm Soy Puertorriquena
Yes, Puertorican

That I don’t look What ?
Oh, I guess I don’t look cafe con leche
mancha de plátano
Mulata,
high yellow
grifa
By the way
I did not know that there was a puertorican look.
And what exactly is that?
That I just look more what?
Well,    Y   Tu   abuela    dónde      Está?
I should say abuela, tío, Tía, y to el barrio
Let me tell you something
FOR YOUR INFORMATION
Most ricans are a mix of Africans, Spaniards, and Native Americans called
Taínos
By the way, no one has seen a Taíno in the last 500 years.
Sooooo   exactly … You know what that means
My     English is covered with spices
spices from the Caribbean
Spices that you might find Strange
Because you were born in this cold fast food of a mall of a country
Where Spanish is a foreign word
That you are ashamed to learn

And when you try
Is not there
Only mumbles of a murmur
Susurando el olvido
A reganadientes
Pretendiendo
Escondiendo la vergüenza
You remember Puerto Rico on the 2nd Sunday of every June
When everybody is suddenly proud to be Puerto Rican
No the word is Boricua
Boricuas Here, Boricuas THERE, Boricuas everywhere
And everyone waves the flags
The flags that they don’t even understand
And no one knows why they are here
Yes HERE Now
Do you Know?
why your parents or grandparents vinieron aqui?
De que Pueblo?
Cuando te bañaste en las aguas calientes del Caribe?
Better yet
Do you really know that …?
We all came from the Motherland
Africa
Even the Spanish people that came with Colon, Columbus
However you want to say it
Lived 700 hundred years under the Moors
You heard that right
The moors as in Arabs as in black Arabs
SO … in other words
Not only I
But we
Have over 500 years of African mestizaje
The so called “white people” that everyone is so proud of
As in “my grandparents are from Spain
Well if they are …
They
Too have negrITOs in them
Remember the Gitanos
But that is another story …
Getting back to the Boricua’s issue

What history do you know?
Ever heard of
Agüeybaná
Albizu Campos
Luis Palés Matos
Rafael Betances
Arturo Schomburg
Francisco Oller
Julia De Burgos
Rafael Hernández
Segundo Ruiz Belvís
Enrique Laguerre
Mariana Bracetti
Pedro Pietri

Still havING problems figuring me out?
Or is it that you just don’t know
Who you are?

=====

Domino Nights Puma Perl

On Water Street,
scaffolds envelop the buildings,
wire screens surround the benches,
iron fences line the street.
You must walk a hot summer block
in either direction to cross.

To the east, construction continues.
To the west, trucks sit, waiting.

Approaching or leaving,
it feels like a detention center
without passports or means of escape.

Late nights on Water Street,
beneath the scaffolding,
behind the steaming sidewalks,
and the screens and the fences,
the men set up their dominoes table
and their friends watch them play,
awaiting their turns.

We wave on our way to walk our dogs
and when returning home in the humid air.

There are no passersby on Water Street,
no loitering without intent or purpose
but I will reply to the questions
they might have asked had they existed.

Why, they might wonder, do the men sit
at a bridge table in the stifling heat
beneath scaffolds, behind screens and fences?
Surely, there are air-conditioned apartments
where they might socialize and yell Capicu!

Because, I would answer, it is our street,
this is our Lower East Side that we breathe,
this is our space where neighbors smile
as they pass by and call out, Otra vez
you’re still at it, as time slowly propels
us closer to wherever we are headed,
but until we get there, the table is set
for another night of apocalyptic dominos.

Some More Poetry

The Great Superstition (Sonnet) | Abhijit Naskar | Little Planet on The Prairie

Delightful Poetry On Thursday

Just click the title to read more about the poet and the poem.

In a Grain of Sand by Jesús Papoleto Meléndez

To see a world in a grain of sand …
—from “Auguries of Innocence” by William Blake

We are Starseeds
every one of us –
you & me,
& me and you
& him & her,
& them
& they
& those
Who know of this
     are truly blessed …

True for all
   living beings,
beings living –
not humans only,
but ants & trees
& the open breeze,
things that breathe
air or fire,
water, earth
   all kinds of dust
& dirt,
particles
a part of all,
all a part
  of
Everything
that is
in everything;
Thus, it Sings!!!
& its song
is Life,
    & Life
                                                                          is!!! …
a seed of Stars,
the dust of Suns
& Moons
rocks & dust
& outer smoke
  in outer space
Floating
in a bath of timelessness,
   counted, measured
numbered
by some species –
others caring not;
Science & Mathematics
   trying to plot
    Poetry in motion,
Motion
in a Helix’s curve,
And Life
on Earth
becomes visible
to You
through the naked I!

Wed.AM Poem

As always, please click through to learn more about the poem, and the poet.

The Talking Coconut by Ed Morales

Sunset at Luquillo wetlands
Brings the biting flies
As night sky caresses
The murmuring sand

El coco que habla
Me preguntó, cowrie eyes smiled
About the twilight Idlewild
Donde llegó mi papá

He said he was Elegguá
But was wise to front Changó
At parties, in the bodega
Where he had to let go

And declaim the colonial critique
Of privatized electric chic
The long hours spent sweating
The centuries of remembering

Surplus avionetas in northward flow
Slow danced mainland passage
Loss of original language
Nostrand is no place to go

When the jíbaro dance
In the Caborrojeño
Spelled the death of the docile
Somnambulant bugaloo

The coco could only
Speak in tongues freely
The babble of the balneario
Espíritu of the coíony

The décima ringing
Spirit called Lavoe
Alchemical singing
Breaking bad flow

Changó outside,
Elegguá down low
The crossed flag of Lares
Always lets you know

Poetry on Tuesday Morning

(This one fascinates me. As always, click on the title to learn more about the poem, and the poet as well.)

Fantasy Tennessee Reed

I stay at an underwater hotel
My room cost $40,000 per night
But I used my hotel points I earned
From all the traveling I have done over the years
My room’s floor-to-ceiling windows look out into the royal purple waters
A Convict Surgeonfish swims by
Its electric blue body tilts as it veers to my left
Two snorkelers dive below me
Paying close attention to the rapidly changing current

And watching out for the camouflaged stone fish
Whose spine releases a poison that can cause paralysis
There is no antidote for its venom
Glad that I’m far from the crowds
And in my room relaxing

I dine at the underwater hotel
My table placed against the glass windows
The deep waters below me
And shallow waters above me
I look through the glass ceiling
And see a white light at the top,
Which is a reflection of the sunlight

I visit the underwater hotel’s spa
Tucked underneath white sheets
With hot stones placed on my upper back, neck and shoulders
I close my eyes
Hearing the sounds of rainfall, breaking waves, wind,
Landslides and earthquakes from the depths below
As I get massaged by candlelight

I depart the underwater hotel
The boat taking me back to shore
Where I meet a taxi that takes me to the airport
We glide over turquoise, shallow waters
I look behind me
I see the hotel becoming smaller and smaller
And the deep waters becoming a darker and darker blue
A storm is approaching
The sky reflects how I feel
Now that my solo vacation has come to an end

Poetry On Monday

(It’s just pretty. To learn more, click through on the title.)

Lament

Rainer Maria Rilke 1875 –1926; translated from the German by Jessie Lamont

Oh! All things are long passed away and far.
A light is shining but the distant star
From which it still comes to me has been dead
A thousand years . . . In the dim phantom boat
That glided past some ghastly thing was said.
A clock just struck within some house remote.
Which house?—I long to still my beating heart.
Beneath the sky’s vast dome I long to pray . . .
Of all the stars there must be far away
A single star which still exists apart.
And I believe that I should know the one
Which has alone endured and which alone
Like a white City that all space commands
At the ray’s end in the high heaven stands.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on December 8, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.

Sunday Poetry

Please click the link below to read about this poem, and the poet, too.

A Casualty List Mary Carolyn Davies

There was always waiting in our mother’s eyes,
Anxiety and wonder and surmise,
Through the long days, and in the longer, slow,
Still afternoons, that seemed to never go,
And in the evening, when she used to sit
And listen to our casual talk, and knit.
And when the day was dark and rainy, and
Not fit to be abroad in, she would stand
Beside the window, and peer out and shiver,
As small sleek raindrops joined to make a river
That rushed, tempestuous, down the window pane,
And say, “I wonder what they do in rain?
Is it wet there in the trenches, do you think?”
And she would wonder if he had his ink
And razor blades and toothpaste that she sent;
And if he read much in his Testament,
Or clean forgot, some mornings, as boys will.
But always the one wonder in her eyes
Was, “Is he living, living, living, still
Alive and gay? Or lying dead somewhere
Out on the ground, and will they find him there?”
She closed her lids each night upon that look
Of waiting, as a hand might close a book
But never change the words that were within.
And when the morning noises would begin
A new day, and a young sun touched the skies,
Again she woke with waiting in her eyes.

But that is over now. She does not read
The lists of casualties, since that one came
A week or two ago. There is no need.
She’s making sweaters now for other men
And knitting just as carefully as then.
There is no change, except that as she plies
Her needles, swift and rhythmic as before,
There is no waiting in our mother’s eyes,
Anxiety or wonder any more.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on December 7, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.

Saturday AM Poetry

Please click through on the title to read more about the poet, and the poem.

My Apologies

Ammiel Alcalay

^{after Bulund al-Haidari}

To the hostages of our policies, my apologies—
the petty stenographers of the crooked rulers
in the once fancy now crumbling cities
of our fading Empire lied then.
They lied then and they lie now.
Everything they say and write is a lie,
about law and freedom, about equality
and justice, in the rubble of the bombs
we make and sell, in the silent cries
of limbless orphans, in the night
lit by white phosphorous and the
relentless sound of buzzing drones.
They tell us we used to have things of
value, even things we ourselves made,
and that it was a place like no other.
All I know is that Sinbad once sailed
to Gaza and so to Gaza he’ll sail once again.

A Poem on Friday

How Some of Us Survived Cuando El Mundo Did Not Want Us

(Find out more about this poem and this poet by clicking above.)

Emanuel Xavier

In the shadows of city lights, we dwelled,
untold stories, almas olvidadas,
enduring streets where dreams were bought and sold.

Corazones—like broken glass,
reflecting pain, the sting of scorn,
searching for love en la oscuridad.

Walking the piers—our runway, steps unsure,
inocencia pérdida seeking solace, grace,
amidst the chaos, makeshift homes.

Voices silenced, cries ignored,
por un mundo that turned a blind eye,
yet we found familia in our souls.

Remember these legends,
children marked by endless strife,
love soaring entre el odio.

In this lucha, there was truth,
in this love, there was vida,
in this survival, there was hope.

Poetry: “A Cuban Modernist in Miami”

Adrian Castro

Transcendental poses are fractured by migration
In Rafael Soriano’s chimeras
dreams transpire through the electric human
A body can pitch several lingams—
there is only one home
as it returns from another journey
a new sunrise
an orange memory
hand pointing the indigo way inward
A conjurer throws a fistful of lips
five teeth tell the sunburst story . . .

When we search for an object
there is only finding the quest
it is after all
like that—
you merge you speak
there is art
& you find your way home
inside the infinite