family
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Ars Poetica in Fragments
Son in the background,Mother in the fields. She tends the garden that will die.She grows guarapo. She serves. A broken window remains; my brother’s roomempty. Do not look. It is just me. Maybe the mirror is the manin the house long gone, ready to abandon it all,forget his kids, forget his debtsand his vows? I…
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night letter to my mother
you lie to yourself // i learn late to work inside the bodyslow madness // in the end you mend // the broken partsi lieyou die working // the body gave up // and in my final act// i try to mend // the broken piecesthe mirror breaksyou walk the same dirty sidewalksbefore you were…
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the house on fire
Themes: labor, inherited, survival, desire, bilingual the house on firewe were made to stay insidethe borderline. safety is not beyond measureyou once said, as we cross the plains in smoketo head to guánica baywe must first pass the sunflower fieldsthe red bricks of ghetto living onceheld the sun,the heat was pressed into my backnowdecayfresh orange en…
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in the valley where sunflowers burn // smoke and missing father
Two American sonnets en Borinkén Themes: Family // Love // Silence // Queerness // Borinkén in the valley where sunflowers burnawake, i find wood burningin a house not too far off. palm trees bow,in prayer, but collapse. a sheet of tarlooms above the mountain’s base—so thick, it presses like molasses mixingwith scrambled eggs. a smoke-slick…
