Tóxico

  “Damn you! You left on me an empty hole across my life. When you came, at the beginning, I thought it was just like a toxic relationship, and you were going to change like a dollar when I put you in a jackpot machine, in reality, I couldn’t change you, you were sick and wicked, the machine I introduced you was not like a washing machine cleaning out of all the negativity you produced, making you Mr. Clean, making you as bright as the days of June, making you more like me, instead you were like a dollar when put inside a quarter machine, I only get cents backs. You took my revolutionary hair with you on a train ride, and with that you took the weight inside my skin, you made me pale, and it was devastating. But you know what? Dear cancer, I survived, you took what I didn’t need – the pressure I used to put on myself to be UNA MODELO de revista or like my neighbor with fake breast, and the blindness of my ignorance. I wanted to thank you, as you’re leaving my body, and leaving me with short chaotic, sexual, curly, hair; I have come to the realization that what the dollar is worth would never increase its value, that’s why I am worth more than money, beauty advertisement and a fake glass body. I used to waste my life, but I have a hole across my chest, across my memory, to remind me; to never waste my time if I want to live this life just right… one more… morning.”

                           •••

“¡Maldito sea! Usted dejó en mí un agujero vacío en toda mi vida. Cuando viniste, al principio, pensé que eras como una relación tóxica, y que ibas a cambiar como un dólar cuando te puse en una máquina de casino, en realidad, yo no te podía cambiar, tú estabas enfermo y eras malvados, la máquina donde te pude no era como una lavadora de ropa que eliminaba toda la negatividad que tú produjiste, haciéndote un Don Limpio, tan brillante como los días de junio, haciéndote más como yo, en su lugar eran como un dólar cuando se ponen dentro de una máquina de cambio, solo me dan centavos. Usted tomó mi cabello revolucionario en un viaje en el tren, y con su despedida también tomo el peso dentro de mi piel, me hiciste pálida, y fue devastador. ¿Pero sabes que? Estimado cáncer, sobreviví, tomando lo que yo no necesitaba – la presión que solía poner en mí misma para ser UNA MODELO de revista o tener las pechugas falsas de mi vecina, y la ceguera de mi ignorancia. Quería dar las gracias a usted, ya que está dejando mi cuerpo, y me dejaste con poca un caótico, sexual,rizado, pelo; he llegado a la conclusión de que lo que un dólar vale nunca va aumentar su valor, es por eso que valgo más que el dinero, los anuncios de revistas y un cuerpo de vidrio falso. Solía ​​perder mi vida, pero tengo un agujero en mi pecho, a través de mi memoria, para recordarme; nunca perder mi tiempo si quiero vivir esta vida justa … otra … mañana más.”

Decolonizing Hair

“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.”

VII

 

Foto por Fernelis Lajara 

He decidido mudarme.
He decidido mudarme al otro lado
de alambres con pullas
llevando en los pesones circulares conmigo
Mirarme con una lupa
hacia dentro
(dentro del de adentro)
y amarme
amarme sola…

•••

I’ve decided to move .
I’ve decided to move to the other side with wire barbs
carrying the circular nipples with me
Looking at myself with a magnifying glass
towards inside
(within the inside)
and love me
love me
alone…

This Train is Going Downtown 

“Going to sleep with the past trapped around those moon looking eyes pretending to not care at all about what happened and you still care I still care, we both know, be both feel it, rushing down our throats in our separated cities in our divided pillows in our distant bodies that we are still connected to the day when you were still a stranger bypassing the subway car in Brooklyn waking me up, shaking me up, making me feel human, human, human…some word in people’s mouth that doesn’t have significance any longer for me, after you.

•••

“El ir a dormir con el pasado envuelto alrededor de los ojos que se miran como la luna fingiendo que no les importa en absoluto lo que sucedió y todavía te importa todavía me importa, ambos sabemos, los sentimos los dos, corriendo por nuestras gargantas en nuestras ciudades separadas en nuestras almohadas distantes en nuestros cuerpos separados que todavía estamos conectados a el días cuando todavía una desconocido eras  pasando por el vagón del metro en Brooklyn, que me despertaba, temblando, haciéndome sentir humano, humano, humano…una palabra más en la boca de la gente que ya significando no tiene, después de ti.”

Alone

Lentamente

L e n t a m e n t e

L-e-n-t-a-m-e-n-t-e

Va naciendo

Va creciendo

como un árbol

esta medio vivo

hasta que rápidamente

vea el olor de sus ojos

ha visto nacer el fuego

al conocerla a ella, a ella

len-ta-men-te

si no, se va a dormir solo,

sin vida.

•••

Slowly

S l o w l y

S-l-o-w-l-y

it is being born

it will grow

like a tree

it is half alive

until quickly

it sees the smell of her eyes

until you meet her, her

you would not see

the fire been born

slow-ly

if not, you go to sleep alone,

lifeless.

Liar 

De todas tus mentiras la que más me encanto fue la que no dijiste con tu lengua pero sí con tu cara, como por ejemplo… “Yo no quiero comer más, estoy lleno”, y tu boca goteando.

Of all your lies, the one that I liked the most was the one that you didn’t say with your tongue, but with your face. For example, “I don’t wanna eat, I’m full,” and you’re there salivating.

Jamaica Avenue 

 

Photo by José Silva

“The bus left me this morning. It was damn cold. Don’t be. Don’t be fooled by this tin light you see across Jamaica Avenue. I am burning inside, I have the Dominican sun inside me. I survived. I don’t know. No me pregunten. ¡Que se yo! I don’t really know, how can one adapt? How can you pretend you don’t miss a single thing? Your hands are cold, freezing, hard-heartless-cold winter got me this time. I am lying, not only this time… multiple times. There, while waiting for the Q56. In front of everyone, it did not cared a bit. My twelve year old self was desperated. You would be too, if someone would take you away from the bright sun that burns your body while bringing happiness under a tranquil wooden house in the campo. It has mutilado lo que soy, ahora. I told you I was not lying, I was honest from the beginning. I, myself, no longer wait for the MTA to sent me the bus to go somewhere. I persist fighting against a winter that I did not give birth to, holding it like a child, even if it cries and pulled my brown hair, I still have patience to give him love. But this bus, the one I am waiting on, I don’t want to take me anywhere. I want to just go home. I hope, I really hope, with all my mixed heart that the driver have a pilot license, home is far–not here.” —La niña diaspora
F.P.

Serum

 

Photo by Joelle Santos @azuquita.prieta

 

Amo el tiempo, porque a pesar de ser lento como un suero en hospital público en Santo Domingo, lo arregla todo si se tiene paciencia.

Y mi estructuras favoritas son las arrugas
Y no hay cosas más linda que alguien
que no le tiene miedo a las canas
Y quién engendra paciencia en los costados
es èl (el tiempo), que se asfixia de esta
gente
y lo endulza todo
y la paciencia se sienta a deleitar.
I love the time, because despite being as slow as a public hospital in Santo Domingo, it fixes everything if you have patience.

And my favorite structures are wrinkles
And the cutest thing is someone
that is not afraid of grey hair
And who begets patience on the sides
It is him (the time), who falls in love with
these people
and sweetens all
and patience sits to feel delight.

—F.P. @Mujerconvoz_poetry

Escape

[A second collaboration with a teacher and writer @unclewalts]

I want to follow the stars
with her until we have been
to places unknown and
tasted foods and fresh air
in every clime, until time
seems to stand still and
we become one, together
in a strange land, until
we finally unite and bind
our souls as one.

— m r @Unclewalt2

I want to find you in the
mold of the bathroom floor
(with pastel colors and dramatic lines),
que tú braid the uncontrollable
chaotic hair of mine,
and then I can react to the
smell of your pensamiento 
– kind of in Inglés – which
is traveling from the vocals
of the siren in the autopistas 
of the world, but only coming
to salvarme a mí, rescue me.

— F.P. @Mujerconvoz_poetry