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.

^{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

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.

^{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.

I love you
            because the Earth turns round the sun
            because the North wind blows north
                 sometimes
            because the Pope is Catholic
                 and most Rabbis Jewish
            because the winters flow into springs
                 and the air clears after a storm
            because only my love for you
                 despite the charms of gravity
                 keeps me from falling off this Earth
                 into another dimension
I love you
            because it is the natural order of things

I love you
            like the habit I picked up in college
                 of sleeping through lectures
                 or saying I’m sorry
                 when I get stopped for speeding
            because I drink a glass of water
                 in the morning
                 and chain-smoke cigarettes
                 all through the day
            because I take my coffee Black
                 and my milk with chocolate
            because you keep my feet warm
                 though my life a mess
I love you
            because I don’t want it
                 any other way

I am helpless
            in my love for you
It makes me so happy
            to hear you call my name
I am amazed you can resist
            locking me in an echo chamber
            where your voice reverberates
            through the four walls
            sending me into spasmatic ecstasy
I love you
            because it’s been so good
            for so long
            that if I didn’t love you
            I’d have to be born again
            and that is not a theological statement
I am pitiful in my love for you

The Dells tell me Love
            is so simple
            the thought though of you
            sends indescribably delicious multitudinous
            thrills throughout and through-in my body
I love you
            because no two snowflakes are alike
            and it is possible
            if you stand tippy-toe
            to walk between the raindrops
I love you
            because I am afraid of the dark
                 and can’t sleep in the light
            because I rub my eyes
                 when I wake up in the morning
                 and find you there
            because you with all your magic powers were
                 determined that
I should love you
            because there was nothing for you but that
I would love you

I love you
            because you made me
                 want to love you
            more than I love my privacy
                 my freedom          my commitments
                      and responsibilities
I love you ’cause I changed my life
            to love you
            because you saw me one Friday
                 afternoon and decided that I would
love you
I love you I love you I love you

Dear President,

I’m a Hispanic immigrant
You know me
You’ve heard me.

But you don’t

You know my story
You know where I’m from
You know what I look for
You know what I want.

But you don’t

Like thousands of people
Like thousands of stories
I’m a Hispanic immigrant
But you don’t know me.

I left pinolillo y cacao helado
Fritangas los viernes en la noche
Nacatamal los fines de semana
A mi abuela en la casa

Al perrito que quedó solo y llorando
A mi Nicaragua

Mi Nicaragua y su rica cultura
Sus hermosas playas y volcanes ardientes
Su gente amorosa y hermosa

I left my Nicaragua hoping
That my future would look brighter here

I left hoping

Y todo por el
“American Dream”

El American Dream que se va desvaneciendo
The longer I stay
Because the longer I stay
I realize
I am not heard
I am not seen
And I am not wanted here

“Permanent residency or citizenship”
Is the first requisite for any scholarship

Because I have to be one of them
I have to be an American
I have to speak English
In order to have real opportunities

Because while I’m still Hispanic
While I’m still an immigrant
There’s no American Dream

¿Y el sueño americano?

With no scholarships
How do I pay ten thousand dollars per year?
How can my immigrant parents with immigrants’ jobs pay ten thousand dollars per year for each of their children? Or even one?

Where’s the American Dream for them?

There isn’t one
Cause they can’t speak English
And they have to be American

The American Dream
That promised we could study, work, live
Fades away

And if there are so many stories like mine?
If there are so many people like me
If they decide to take away my identity and label me as just another immigrant
If presidents, Americans, put all of us into one group
If they assume that they know each one of our stories and each one of our needs
If they think their system is fair
If they think that they’re helping us
If they think they know what’s best for us
If they know immigrants so well
Then how are we still not seen?
How are we still so overlooked?
How are we still so overworked?

Working for a government that does not want us in their country
That is the American Dream.

to enjoy myself. enjoying you enjoying. yourself to(o). ooo!       enjoying. to enjoy myself enjoying you enjoying me enjoying myself enjoying you enjoying yourself    . enjoying enjoying yourself enjoying me enjoying you/me.   enjoying.enjoying myself you yourself enjoying yourself enjoying me enjoying you enjoying yourself. enjoying.   enjoying you. enjoying me.    enjoying you&me younme youme enjoying yummi.   enjoying you enjoying me enjoying myself. enjoying you enjoying joy enjoying joy yourself. you yourself joy&me enjoying. us 3 or 4. my joy and your joy — joy we enjoying   you enjoying me. you&me enjoying. you&me joying and enjoying. ain’t joying. andjoying. injoying. Me joying you and you joying me. you&me younme   youme you whom me — us. & joy is the you in me and the me in you. joy   joy.   joy is the and. the end. of all this you and me. younme. you in me. me in you. tho you-you and me-me. both younme i. both younme am. both younme is. joy is the and. joy is the end. joy is the in. the way thru you for me. the way thru you to me. the way thru me for you. the way thru me to you. seein me thru. seein you thru. seein you tru. seein me tru. truly seein thru you and me. truly seein younme. truly seein you in me. me in you. truly seein you and me. me and you. truly seein you end me. me end you. truly younme.

so joy.us how we enjoy ourselves. some each other. (u)s. 

was sex and more of it. sex and talk of it. sex and sexuality and sexism. until some among us began to differentiate it. prefix and suffix it. label it a matter of preference, genetic reconnaissance at birth. and it was it and it was not it. until some among us began to psalm. and what about doing it. and when would we do it to each other again. and it was gratuitous. the blue and white lament of it. until it moved us into ecological proximity. what was near and how loud. the flesh budding, ripening. it had always been a matter of proximity. the what it is was close to us. lewd and it was common. consumptive and it was money. extractive and it was public.

to whet the thing a finger strums a seam of glass

then spirit set its feels on us

we were tending
we were swirling

and we were sensing when it hit us

a porous limb        a glowing portal

sam rivers on repeat

the romanticism of aromanticism inside a poem
the orifice of pitch        a clutch of birds

then our dreams became tumescent
such holiness was flame


and it was fuchsia fuchsia all over the place

In some other life, I can hear you
breathing: a pale sound like running
fingers through tangled hair. I dreamt
again of swimming in the quarry 
& surfaced here when you called for me
in a voice only my sleeping self could 
know. Now the dapple of the aspen 
respires on the wall & the shades cut
its song a staff of light. Leave me—
that me—in bed with the woman 
who said all the sounds for pleasure
were made with vowels I couldn’t
hear. Keep me instead with this small sun
that sips at the sky blue hem of our sheets
then dips & reappears: a drowsy penny 
in the belt of Venus, your aureole nodding 
slow & copper as it bobs against cotton 
in cornflower or clay. What a waste
the groan of the mattress must be
when you backstroke into me & pull 
the night up over our heads. Your eyes
are two moons I float beneath & my lungs
fill with a wet hum your hips return.
It’s Sunday—or so you say with both hands 
on my chest—& hot breath is the only hymn 
whose refrain we can recall. And then you 
reach for me like I could’ve been another 
man. You make me sing without a sound.