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Poetry

The Iguanas Skitter Through the Cemetery by the Sea

September 11, 2023

 Viejo San Juan, Puerto RicoThe iguanas slither from the branches of trees splintered by the hurricanes. The iguanas crawl from the cracks in the ground split by the earthquakes. The iguanas rise from brown floodwaters that carry bridges to the [...]

Isabela’s Red Dress Flutters Away

September 11, 2023

For LaurenThe other teachers warned you: She will curse you out. She said: I thought  you would be just another white bitch, but you’re not. You heard Isabela improvise a bilingual trumpet solo of obscenities to blast the faces of the boys ci [...]

scholarship

December 3, 2020

to practice intense study. to research. to seek again. to require confirmation,
a proof. to believe.     to believe in knowing because it can be said
again and again. the proving of a theorem.    now the corollary: to have learned

three sections from “the house”

December 3, 2020

 erasure of a letter to the current homeowners:Dear       moment     driving through       a double take.I grew up.        twenty years ago.          [...]

Lament

December 3, 2020

At a certain point, I lost you. I came to know it first
as a weather, the earliest hour of day breaking
on the bedsilk, its low rung of light, a pregnant silence.

Phantom Heart

December 3, 2020

This is the sound love makes—
tolling of a tongueless bell, its wagging
and wagging despite; its whole head
teeming with wind. The sound

If I Were Not Alexander

December 3, 2020

I would be Diogenes. Swing my lamp
through these dishonest days in search.
I myself have looked the known world
over and given everything a new name.

Two Medicine

December 3, 2020

Imagine you could learn 
the names of every river,
each upthrust mountain
and fault folded on itself:

Last Supper

December 3, 2020

I cannot remember the last meal I shared with my father.
Only those long last nights slipping him what ice chips
he could still stomach and then swabbing his chapped lips
with a wetted pink sponge.

The Household Gods

December 3, 2020

Forgive me, 
I have smuggled them away
from my father’s house to this sodden pitch
in the middle of my life, their names 
asleep under my tongue. I have walked

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