On Day 1

The First (Puerto Rican) Family 

breaks-wave

migrating The White House lawn

sworn back into a Sunday where

drive when they would breeze

down lake shore and how parents

reveal with pomp and stock

the white houses.

On Day 2

Air Force One runways in

San Juan with coqui-on-sole

Air Force 1’s. The passengers

a cabinet of homemade sazón

all applaud the land.

On Day 3

Major negotiations commence

to support a complete secession

from Goya.

On Day 4

We are introduced to the first

First Tio who doubles as a godfather. Making sure

the presidents of future

who double as nieces

stay on the zoom call

until teacher releases.

On Day 5

First Chihuahuas 

Cosita and Pepe

were sent home

for noise. much protest

from living bantam

for noise. much protest

they shake nervy

from being close to almighty

yet no way of saving anyone

for noise. much protest

they nervous all over carpet

for noise. much protest.

On Day 6

                         Let us prepare for independence, demand reparation, appeal to history by securing justice. 

On Day 7

like how the ceo of the business

just runs the company

but the company will always be

the company / business as usual

the business of country

is logged in favors

and company is kept as is but

no longer have to wait in line for bad bunny tickets

no longer have to wait for power

no longer have to

^{—after Ted Berrigan}

Even on the 13th floor of a high building, Chicago’s 
wind winds its slick way through any unsecured 
window on its singsong to the lake. It’s fine-tuned, 

perfectly pitched in this sinister season 
of cackling jack-o’-lanterns & candy corns 
nobody eats unless they’re the last sweets left.

Bags of fun nonsense for all the little ninjas 
& ghosts. It’s true, I weep too much when 
the seasons partition: snack-sized tears dropping onto 

tear-sized leaves swirling in the autumn 
of my reproduction. Occasional receipts & parking 
tickets, too, yellowed during their own windy migrations. 

Like the rest of us gusty apparitions, every 
untethered thing ends up at the lake shore seasonally. 

I thought by now my reverence would have waned,
matured to the tempered silence of the bookish or revealed
how blasé I’ve grown with age, but the unrestrained
joy I feel when a black skein of geese voyages like a dropped
string from God, slowly shifting and soaring, when the decayed
apples of an orchard amass beneath its trees like Eve’s
first party, when driving and the road Vanna-Whites its crops
of corn whose stalks will soon give way to a harvester’s blade
and turn the land to a man’s unruly face, makes me believe
I will never soothe the pagan in me, nor exhibit the propriety
of the polite. After a few moons, I’m loud this time of year,
unseemly as a chevron of honking. I’m fire in the leaves,
obstreperous as a New England farmer. I see fear
in the eyes of his children. They walk home from school,
as evening falls like an advancing trickle of bats, the sky
pungent as bounty in chimney smoke. I read the scowl
below the smiles of parents at my son’s soccer game, their agitation,
the figure of wind yellow leaves make of quaking aspens.