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Second Country
I. I like newness, the kind that leaves traces on the page of morning. When it calls, when it forces you to see the light— the morning glory, the moisture softening on the glass of the windowpane. The sky is bluer than blue. Let him go. II. This is an easy test. The volume of— the square root of— Don’t they need men? You remember: men make this industrial complex. I know where I am. I know where I…
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First Utterance
No more.No more.No more,fathers.No more,smoke.No moreboyswhoreturn.No morehousesonfire.No morepoetry.I wantedto catchthe smokebeforeit escapedthroughthe window.I thoughtit wantedthe sky.Help me.Help me findmy song.My armswere too smallfor windows.Too smallfor clouds.Too smallfor father.No more.I rememberthe barsfirst.Thenlight.Thensmoke.Everything elsecamelater.To catchthe smokepastthe barsof the little bed.To catchwhat lookedlikecloudsforming.To believecloudsenteredthroughwindows.To stretchan armtoo smallfor distance.To thinkthe smokebelongedto my fatherbefore memoryknewthe wordabsence.No more.Can dovesbe dovesstill?Hold melikea…
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Lost Letter: To Mami en las Montañas de Sabana Grande, 1982
The sound of the rooster appeared first. Then a pastel faded blue. A wooden house stands isolated past a long, winding five-kilometer road at the end of la carreterea, where it rained almost every day.A hand takes his instinctively in a warm, made bed. His mother’s face forms creases and is not as pale as…
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somewhere dark in guánica bay
to reach el punto pastthe cliffs — fifty metersof rock abovethe ocean do not speed up or you will meetan untimely deathfar out, en el punto,men devouranother. an older manteaches me this freedomcalladovaronilno afeminadoscasadoven atrás el árbol,in the shadowto watch our shadowscome nearerdo not look into the eyes no questionsdo not touch the face no…
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en el cafetín with my ghost body
Themes: Love // Silence // Desire // Ghosts // Queerness // Bilingual en el cafetín with my ghost bodyi ran into the graying mother by chance,sixty and unafraid on her birthday.she remembered me from work. i didn’t—already a ghost in my own body.her daughter passed drinks of the hourlike blessings.she recalled surviving men who loved…
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i am ruin // mi mansión
Themes: labor, inherited trauma, survival, desire, intimacy, bilingual i am ruini wake in a king-sized bed, four pillows deep enough to sink under cold to the touch i like it that waylike evening rum slow and burning left alone long enough,this is a bed where i could be wrecked by past present future lovers i…
Luis E. Santos 