"After Julia Alvarez."
I have something to say.
But the world pointed otherwise, dark skinned palabras
hung at the bar.
Solely tierra danced.
Mi nombre just kept trying to warm up to the sun.
Don't confuse me with wit, la declamation de
los sueños declared or the great forgetting,
bottled up and shaken.
Aposento, morivivi, Las Mañanitas
summoned to the tide of island water, a closed harbor warming.
Words opened up, forced the hinge
of shell, the fragile genie, my blue eyed muse, el patio
where the world goes dizzy.
I sing in Spanish, too awkward to move with el cielo's lead.
Un rosaria, a chain of silver commands.
I am a country girl.
Numbers escape me to the morning.
I open my cradle and display my array,
the snowy mist of intimacy, an ache on the tongue.
My heart waits on a horizon blown
and early a corner of too many leaves and arrivals, gamma,
flor, color.
Lo que hace back when the force beats back.
A mile-an-hour look looks back.
A vocabulary of dust and blade.
Some things don't translate what this kid could never say.