Category: Spanglish (Poems)

Dígale con la Chemba 

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Photo by Djilas Gomez @djilasgomez

“Ave de pluma
la boca de tu mirada
La veo
I see it
between a bolero
I don’t know what is left of me in these days
I am taking my flight
Soy una negra con boca que teje
un tic tac de las olas
El ruido negado de los pájaros
La radio negra y sabrosa
La rumba descansa
La noche escrita aya, aquí, jamás
El cepillo en la mano de micrófono
Un aparato de alegría
el humo de las nubes
Soy muy joven de anciana
Soy peligro que tiene precaución
Soy la aleta de este avión
Ask for me under a guitar
They will tell you with a seña
y la chemba pará’
who that hell
I am.”

 

 

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“Minority”

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Color de carne, skin color, colored hands, hands colored with pieces of the Atlantic’s warm stomach /spinal cord of pueblos indigenas / pacific thunder and drastic rain, you tell me, tú me dices, I can’t paint the billboards of my skylines with my words (mís palabras) because I am brown and “brown” means backwardness, atrazao’, Old World, smelling like machetes and an uncivilized big wide mouth? My skin will tell you everything you need to know, I will keep writing because brown means I can write in the corners of my people’s minds, I can speak/write/scream/be myself/be unique and still be my type of civilización, and I can be diferente , something, my darling, you lack.            

           —“Minority”

                 

Decolonizing Hair

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“Decolonizing cabellos

Dark brown
Dim romantic night looking spheres
Colored in love with hints of sugar cane
Yellow Jabao’
Melena caprichosa, mal entendida, no sumisa, a ti qué te importa cabellera
Mente suelta
Forestation of the natural
Colonization, out of my scalp!
Display
curls/straight/wavy/rebelde/ I don’t have a type of hair
Show
long/short/medium/a lo macho
como te dé la gana hair
Stop combing árboles of history
Your grandmother
Africana/ taina/mezcla
was a badass
Basass like “I know my ancestry”
Badass like ” I am beautiful”
Badass, edgy, conscious, leída, extravagante
like an evolution
like a revolución of the
“you need to fix your hair”
Do it!
Descoloniza your hair.”

Bathing Scars 

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Photo by Fernelis Lajara @Laj13

Baña your scars.

Baña your tears.

Bath your dignity.

Expose. Give your dimples to

the sun.

Dry your pain.

Become the today

no one will give you.

Be born.

Be born.

— the day I realized I am beautiful

                             

Amazon 

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Photo by the artist Djilas Gomez @djilasgomez.

                                    

                                                                       

For Angy Abreu 

Hitting
was easier for you.
It is your superpower
to grow more cells
between your legs
and ego
but there’s an espacio vacío
on your tiny brain
Hitting, fuck! Golpear 
was easier for you
escupiendo words on her face
you opened up su piel like
a wanted envelope
there is nothing green inside – you thought
He opened up scars that never existed
too bad, the woman in her won’t take crap
too bad, the woman in her won’t shut up
she is the Amazon
wild and beautiful, but don’t tempt her
wild and deep
“don’t touch me”
She is not the false man made green venom
you waited on,
she’s worse…
a scar that won’t weep
it would just dry like the sticky side of the envelope
not like the organ in his pants
that will only oxide with time.

—F.P.

Speak up against domestic violence 🚫‼

La Cotorra de Gentrification

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Photo by José A. Silva

Tumban los tambores
Tumban los recuerdos coloridos
Tumbaron la tibia sombra de alegría
Tuvieron que ser otros, no ellos
Tuvo que ser alguien que vino de lejos
Tuvo, tuvieron, tuvo que tumbar
los edificios del alto Manhattan
Del bajo Manhattan
De allí y de aquí
Allá donde se huele a diáspora
Allá donde tiembla el tambor
Al lado de la bodega amarillenta
¡Ay que dolor!
Tumbando andan los rincones de lo
que hemos sido nosotros
Instantánea ha sido la derrota
Andan con aspiradoras negras
y bocas de palomas milagrosas
“Se tragaron una cotorra” -dijo la vecina
del apartamento de Post Avenue “¡ A mí, no me cotorrea nadie!”- repitió
Máquinas de cotorra son
Cotorreando que salvarán la cuidad
con símbolos de una manzana comía
Pura cotorra na’ma’
Queda poquito tiempo para que tumben
los caminos construidos por inmigrantes
en las
factorías/bodegas/salón/tienda/hoteles/
restaurantes/hospitales/escuelas/
mundo que no se ve y que funciona silenciosamente
con la cotorra que divulga que  gentrification
es la cure para el atrazo
Tumban los buildings
donde llegamos todos a vivir
cuando aun hueliamos a campo Cibaeño
Tumban to’ lo que encuentren
Clavando acomidades lujosas
Dicen que no somos de aquí

“¿De donde somos entonces, mijo?”

Si esta cuidad es un nido de imigracion
Tumban,tumban, tumban sin conciencia
No los tambores…
eso están adentro de los despachados
que los llevan cargados en las bocas
donde quiera que sea su nuevo
edificio.

—F.P.

Don’t Date Women with Stretch Marks

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Don’t date women with stretch marks.
Do yourself a favor… and run.
¡Corre! ¡Corre! Run far
away from them, like
you’re in a marathon to
a black hole, you’re not
going back to Earth.
Ellas son la Tierra,
swallowing your memory,all
up to the moment
you see her.
They know how to
use their white lines
against you.
They know what it’s
like to be stretched
all the way… into a poem
pull all the way back
like Afro-Caribbean hair,
pull back like a metáfora
and still be glorious
and still be alive
having a permanent mark
on you.
You would be missing…
under her curvy smile,
you, will be
like an empty black
and gray wall
in lower Manhathan
on a lower backstreet
finally…
finally…
full of colorful graffiti.

—F.P.

Cabeza Hueca

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Y lo expresó bajito:

-I don’t visit my grandmother because

she doesn’t have WiFi-

-What a shame!-

I thought out loud.

I made a note in my head:

-Do not visit this cabeza hueca,

she doesn’t have a brain.-

©F.P. – 2015.