The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

And whom do I call my enemy?
An enemy must be worthy of engagement.
I turn in the direction of the sun and keep walking.
It’s the heart that asks the question, not my furious mind.
The heart is the smaller cousin of the sun.
It sees and knows everything.
It hears the gnashing even as it hears the blessing.
The door to the mind should only open from the heart.
An enemy who gets in, risks the danger of becoming a friend.

Breathe
. As in what if
the shadow is gold
en? Breathe. As in
hale assuming
exhale. Imagine
that.      As in first
person singular. Homonym
:. As in subject. As
in centeroftheworld as in
mundane. The opposite of spectacle
spectacular. This is just us
breathing. Imagine
normalized respite
gold in shadows
. You have the
right to breathe and remain
. Imagine
that
.

HAVENT HEARD FROM YOU IN AGES STOP LOVE YOUR
LATEST SHOW STOP THIS NO PHONE STUFF IS FOR BIRDS
LIKE YOU STOP ONCE SHOUTED UP FROM STREET ONLY

RAIN AND YOUR ASSISTANT ANSWERED STOP DO YOU
STILL SLEEP LATE STOP DOES YOUR PAINT STILL COVER
DOORS STOP FOUND A SAMO TAG COPYRIGHT HIGH

ABOVE A STAIR STOP NOT SURE HOW YOU REACHED STOP
YOU ALWAYS WERE A CLIMBER STOP COME DOWN SOME
DAY AND SEE US AGAIN END

The war was all over my hands.
I held the war and I watched them
die in high-definition. I could watch

anyone die, but I looked away. Still,
I wore the war on my back. I put it
on every morning. I walked the dogs

and they too wore the war. The sky
overhead was clear or it was cloudy
or it rained or it snowed, and I was rarely

afraid of what would fall from it. I worried
about what to do with my car, or how
much I could send my great-aunt this month

and the next. I ate my hamburger, I ate
my pizza, I ate a salad or lentil soup,
and this too was the war.

At times I was able to forget that I
was on the wrong side of the war,
my money and my typing and sleeping

sound at night. I never learned how
to get free. I never learned how
not to have anyone’s blood

on my own soft hands.

pitorro is what cows use at night to remember day.
god’s wine hangs from balconies to signal it’s safe.
tourists buy towels with parrots,
on their way to my town.
if they even pass through my town.

my town, which is my mother’s town.

we stop by añasco’s post office.
we have a task list.
i still have hair.
they recognize me as sotero’s granddaughter.
we climb up the stairs to a tobaccoed sofa
full of withered flowers as if this were maría.
they bring us coffee and soda crackers.
i listen to unrecognizable names,
and learn these are my blood.
i don’t speak this language,
but they lend me the words.
how is yoli? and school?

my first girlfriend is from a similar town.
we text each other in the bathroom.
i tell her i miss her.
she tells me they’re going to the church retreat.
when i come out, my body molds itself
to certain postural expectations.

morning's dimensions are tricky,
a word i acquired in california or nebraska.
it means my uncles enter and leave the house,
so i can't watch tv by myself.

múcaros divide the land amongst cousins.
they fly according to lines drawn in the treaty.
i go into town to buy eggs and on the way
i roll down the front seat window so the humidity
can enter with cold peach light.

i don’t understand what sort of memories i’m supposed to have.
one where i didn’t go with my boyfriend to the movies every friday,
where i didn’t waste my time looking at shoes or eating at el mesón?

maybe one where i didn’t lie to my family for years,
faking i was the good daughter,
or one where they don't tell me it’s okay,
as they step outside to water the plants.

my grandmother’s hand on my chin says qué linda.
with this accomplishment, the fossils rest and i rise.
but i wasn't asleep, nor good, nor a daughter.

las memorias de la hija buena

pitorro es lo que usan las vacas para recordar el día.
el vino de dios cuelga de los balcones para señalar que es seguro.
los turistas compran toallas con cotorras,
de camino a mi pueblo,
si es que pasan por mi pueblo.

mi pueblo no es sino el pueblo de mi madre.

vamos al correo de añasco.
existen las gestiones.
tengo pelo todavía.
me reconocen como la nieta de sotero.
subimos escaleras hasta un sofá atabacado
con patrón de flores marchitas
como si esto fuese maría.
sacan café y galletas de esporsoda.
escucho nombres irreconocibles.
aprendo que estos son mi sangre.
no hablo este idioma,
pero me prestan las palabras.
¿cómo está yoli? ¿y la escuela?

mi primera novia es de un pueblo similar.
nos texteamos en el baño.
le digo que la extraño.
me dice que van al retiro de la iglesia.
cuando salgo, mi cuerpo se amolda
a ciertas expectativas de la postura.

las dimensiones de la mañana son tricky,
una palabra adquirida en california o nebraska.
significa que entran y salen los tíos de la casa,
y no puedo sentarme a ver televisión sola.

los múcaros dividen el terreno entre los primos.
vuelan según las líneas trazadas por el acuerdo.
bajo a comprar huevos y de camino
bajo la ventana del asiento delantero
para que entre la humedad
con la luz de melocotón frío.

no entiendo bien qué clase de recuerdos se supone que tenga.
¿una donde no fui con mi novio cada viernes al cine,
donde no pasé tiempo mirando zapatos o comiendo en el mesón?

quizás una donde no le mentí a mi familia por años,
fingiendo que era la hija buena,
o una donde no me dicen que está bien,
mientras salen al patio a cuidar las matas.

la mano de mi abuela en mi mentón me dice qué linda.
con este logro, descansan los fósiles y despierto.
pero no dormía, ni era buena, ni era hija.

^{{for the D.A.C.A DREAMers and all our nation's immigrants}}

^{. . . my veins don’t end in me
but in the unanimous blood
of those who struggle for life . . .}

^{. . . mis venas no terminan en mí
sino en la sange unánime
de los que luchan por la vida . . .}

^{—Roque Dalton, Como tú}

Como tú, I question history’s blur in my eyes
each time I face a mirror. Like a mirror, I gaze
into my palm a wrinkled map I still can’t read,
my lifeline an unnamed road I can’t find, can’t
trace back to the fork in my parents’ trek
that cradled me here. Como tú, I woke up to
this dream of a country I didn’t choose, that
didn’t choose me—trapped in the nightmare
of its hateful glares. Como tú, I’m also from
the lakes and farms, waterfalls and prairies
of another country I can’t fully claim either.
Como tú, I am either a mirage living among
these faces and streets that raised me here,
or I’m nothing, a memory forgotten by all
I was taken from and can’t return to again.

Like memory, at times I wish I could erase
the music of my name in Spanish, at times
I cherish it, and despise my other syllables
clashing in English. Como tú, I want to speak
of myself in two languages at once. Despite
my tongues, no word defines me. Like words,
I read my footprints like my past, erased by
waves of circumstance, my future uncertain
as wind. Like the wind, como tú, I carry songs,
howls, whispers, thunder’s growl. Like thunder,
I’m a foreign-borne cloud that’s drifted here,
I’m lightning, and the balm of rain. Como tú,
our blood rains for the dirty thirst of this land.
Like thirst, like hunger, we ache with the need
to save ourselves, and our country from itself.

Cumbia sabrosa cumbia, para ti yo bailo hasta el amanecer

Legs wrap around each other
es la culpa del verso,
on the floor, wood lodges
in the skin open at our heels.

Caderas to the right, to the left
hips swing swaying to el acordeón
hitting notes to the side.

What it is that en realidad
manda en mi país, no es,
el ritmo sabrosón del Salvador.
Es el peso, el dólar, el colón.
Paper currency o cualquier tipo
de intercambio.

Pedacitos of broken bone
splinter in our teeth. Spitting them out,
we count steps, sweep soreness
from the joints—wish I could say
oh, the dancing. Tired arms
scour the greed from resistant corners.

Watch my curves cut through the cadence
of my babosada spree at el 99.
I request all parts of the animal,
wrap red juice of tripa in new dish towels.
Are you watching? As I make deals
that keep me scrubbing to meet
the minimum on the statement.

Try to stack under my pillow
so when I visit I can dance
under neon duty free sign,
binge on brand names
sport a striped American feel.

Pa pa ra pa cu cu cumbia
Yes girl, it’s the remix,
not the record scratched
or skipping. Repetition
but of choreography, interpreting
where desire and wallet part ways.
Sellers nodding heads, unfolding welcome
mats—sold, for cheap.

Es dinero el que manda en mi país
Es el ritmo sabrosón del Salvador

Para allá para acá ay para qué,
did you hear about la fulanita,
out of work, never goes dancing
¿Y eso ? es que she danced
right into the store, slipped and fell
on her debt.

Cumbia de mis amores