Tell me the veins under my skin
are safe inside your casket.
Caoba and negra lora are my favorite trees,
but you can bury me under a flamboyán.
I will still burn inside, impossible to extinguish.
Tell me you will share my stories
with the little ones who pull flowers,
running to give them to their mothers, grandmothers;
the ones who hold the ancestral passage.
They still remember me.
My name will come off their tongue
only to crawl into the mouths of those who cannot pronounce
the names carved unto my crucifix.
Tell me that to be here, with you, meant something,
when you said you loved me, you meant it.
In another life, you did not rip away even the hairs from my arms.
Instead, you took soil & carried the lashes on my eyes to water.
The moon fed me, we made love &
I blessed you before we created our home.
If my body is dying, tell me you love me.
Tell me the ones inside me are safe, bellies full,
cement walls stable enough to cover them.
Don’t tell me about the excavators & bulldozers that wait,
like vultures, to ruin me.
Don’t tell me about the contracts you’ve made,
how the people are waiting to build their homes over my bones.
Tell me about the love you had for my body,
how you promised to sustain me.
I can’t imagine a world where I am not here, with you.
What will I look like once you’ve failed?
Fight with me here, my love, while I am still alive.
Copyright © 2025 by Jacqueline Jiang. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 17, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
Isabela, Puerto Rico
where am I
ordinary explosión
de las sienes
hundred temples
red cerebral
flamboyanes
fuegotten
nunca
dissolvidar
ever fire
in caos
dos pills each morning
tres evening dose
for decades traga
have swallowed peor
con bitter orgullo pill
leve [tiracet] am I
mulch of skyline
where am I
where’s
wepa in
epi
lepsi
lexi
con
o ser
to know one
self a seagull
gab iota
never crashing
bodymind
buildings
melt canopy
fever sun
febrero’s chaos
aches sin hache
hacha de fuego
waking hours
convulsión que soy
seizure I am
walking waves
the express
way ordinary
I of familia
less song
canopy & cave
no cabe aquí
mi trino
mi gorjeo
try no more
to fight the twitch
you are not
tu receta
your prescribed
prescriptive self
receipt of pharmaceuticals
you depend on
para sobrevivir
para sobrevolar
planing over
neural sea
mar neural
gorge of light
coro (escuchando a Villano Antillano):
seagull squawk y guaraguaos
canopy of burning green
familia I’ve never seen
memory’s old wooden house
seizure teoría del caos
red walking ordinary
expressway February
aura’s song is where the sun is
fever dream of flamboyanes
knows no cure, no adversary
Copyright © 2024 by Urayoán Noel. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 24, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.
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 perdida 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.
Copyright © 2024 by Emanuel Xavier. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 5, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.
translated from the Spanish by JD Pluecker
Let’s say something about distances that escape through the body. About what the body needs to say as its joints go silent. Let’s say the body needs to remain quiet to say something about distances. Something left undone, you clarify. Something we did not say and now these swift fingers attempt to stammer on the keyboard. Because, after all, what are we but awkward fingers stammering in an attempt to name? Trainees? Tightrope walkers? We bet everything we had that the body could say something about our distances. Did we lose it all? What was it, anyway, that everything that we bet? What was it but the body and its distances? Let’s say something now, that nothing has been left standing. That someone delivers a speech to us about that everything left unsaid. Say someone, for example, stands upon the ruins and delivers an eloquent speech on the void. Or on what, once broken—after the collapse—can no longer sustain itself. Say someone—despite the collapse—sustains themself on an empty speech. Let’s say something about the body that falls on the ruins or on the void or on the collapse. Let’s say something about a bet that in the void vanishes. Say someone, say that speech mentions distances or everything the body did not say. Say someone flaunts a border. Say someone else tries to defile it, you add. Say someone knows their body is also a distance. Say someone builds themself up or rebuilds themself out of distances that open or close. Say someone rewrites herself with a speech of an other. Say someone or say their distances. Say everything be said and simultaneously each of the words written here be lost. Say someone trims off all the lifeless branches. Say each of the fallen stones give shape to a new structure. Say each word might be a stone and no one throws the first. Say someone structures a body as distance. Say someone names themself in the loss. Say the unbreathable air from the fires is expelled, is vanished. Say someone. A trainee or a tightrope walker. Say a body or a speech. Say this distance be sufficient to name ourselves otherwise.
Discurso sobre el cuerpo
Digamos algo sobre las distancias que escapan por el cuerpo. Sobre lo que el cuerpo necesita decir mientras enmudecen sus articulaciones. Digamos que el cuerpo necesita quedarse quieto para decir algo sobre las distancias. Algo que quedó pendiente, aclaras. Algo que no dijimos y que ahora estos dedos céleres sobre el teclado intentan balbucear. Porque, después de todo ¿qué somos sino balbuceos en torpes dedos que intentan nombrar? ¿Aprendices? ¿Equilibristas? Apostamos todo lo que teníamos a que el cuerpo podría decir algo sobre nuestras distancias ¿Lo perdimos todo? ¿Qué fue, en todo caso, ese todo que apostamos? ¿Qué fue sino el cuerpo y sus distancias? Digamos algo ahora que ya nada queda en pie. Que alguien nos dé un discurso sobre todo aquello que quedó sin decirse. Que alguien, por ejemplo, se ponga en pie sobre las ruinas y dicte un elocuente discurso sobre el vacío. O sobre lo que una vez roto, tras el derrumbe, ya no puede sostenerse en sí mismo. Que alguien, a pesar del derrumbe se sostenga sobre un discurso vacío. Digamos algo sobre el cuerpo que cae sobre las ruinas o sobre el vacío o sobre el derrumbe. Digamos algo sobre una apuesta que en el vacío se esfuma. Que alguien, que ese discurso hable de las distancias o de todo aquello que el cuerpo no dijo. Que alguien ostente una frontera. Que alguien más intente profanarla, añades. Que alguien sepa que su cuerpo es también una distancia. Que alguien se construya o se reconstruya a partir de distancias que se abren o que se cierran. Que alguien se reescriba con un discurso ajeno. Que alguien o que sus distancias. Que todo quede dicho y al mismo tiempo se pierda cada una de las palabras que aquí se escriben. Que uno pode todas las ramas que se han secado. Que cada una de las piedras caídas conformen un nuevo edificio. Que cada palabra sea una piedra y nadie tire la primera. Que alguien edifique un cuerpo como distancia. Que alguien se nombre a sí mismo en la pérdida. Que el aire irrespirable de los incendios se expulse, se esfume. Que alguien. Un aprendiz o un equilibrista. Que un cuerpo o un discurso. Que esta distancia sea suficiente para nombrarnos otros.
Copyright © 2024 by Sara Uribe and JD Pluecker. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 6, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.