(25.805693, -80.199313)
(40.6781784, -73.9441579)
(18.1757914, -66.1612779)
*
(25.805693, -80.199313)
i’m remembered to give some gold feeling felt dense
in the belly, pacify some guilt, some fear, some glitter
of redemption, my body bringing you to florida trees,
old banyans raining roots, the flamboyan aflame with
bloom, those trees we were beneath, softly in another
body, on another earth, sinking somewhere in cidra, a
country disappearing from our hands, but that place
doesn’t exist anymore, here the foliage blurs the
windows and i don’t know who you are, pulling me to
the machine in your chest, my hand weak at the
pacemaker possessing your shitty heart, the heat
outside massaging the metal trying to eat us through
the car, we’re going somewhere i can’t remember, but
still returning me the same, some money in my hands,
some memory, your ugly blood making a home of me
*
(18.1757914, -66.1612779)
(40.6781784, -73.9441579)
*
(25.805693, -80.199313)
(40.6781784, -73.9441579)
why did you say my name like that, like women
who’ve loved my mother, carrying the cadence of two
countries braided in their mouths, as if you could feed
me that way, you taught me instead, i’m most worthy
of love in the belly of fear, remembered to be home
for some hunger, some hallucination, your hands,
pulling me to the machine in your skin, some small
deity lending you life, you came back in reverse, ghost,
death, body, hungry for my heart that was made of
your heart, still young and unruined by time and
sickness, only the stupid circle of our island history,
outside the trees heave in the heat, blurring the
window green ’til they reclaim their shapes, and
they’re looking at us again, the flamboyan aflame with
bloom, remembering us from another body, on
another earth, sinking somewhere in cidra, a country
leaking from our hands, but that place is a myth, our
bodies made of story, the movement owning our
bones, here i don’t know who you are, dipping your
fingers into my chest, squeezing the wet animal of my
heart, like deep love, with both whole hands, then you
ask me how old i am, sending me back to Brooklyn,
green and bowed beneath summer, quiet in your
home as you spoke to a man about my genitals,
passing laughter gently between your faces like pollen,
and i’m a boy and something translucent, floating into
the maples outside drinking time and making sugar,
until miami returns in color, my blood thumping i
your palms, how old am i, the trees again, my blood
again .
*
(18.1757914, -66.1612779)
*
(41.903051, -87.687262)
water swims through the rocks beneath us, time
treated our bodies the same, i found you in a
photograph and sunk at how ugly you were, growing
grateful for your silence, for the unknown history of
your fists and teeth, the ways you would’ve worn my
future body to haunt and consume, i’d learn these
things anyway, the field study floating from the
mouths of women and girls, the maps from the
mouths of men and boys, i was a piece of glass to
bend the light and magnify the vision, tool for the
men standing in my blood, you standing in my blood,
i was food, so i kept looking at my shape in the gold
rimmed mirror, trying to feel gorgeous, loving the
shape of my eyes, trying to find all the women in my
face, trying to walk lighter, washing myself with my
lover’s language, inviting the kindness to myself,
admiring the colors collected on me, the pink-brown
gathered between my legs, the beauty mark on my
mouth, deep black of my curls, but in the dream i find
my hands shuffling photos of you, weightless and
smiling like a man unhaunted by shame, looking
better with each image layered over the other, until
the morning opens me upset, the honey light spilling
to an isthmus on my skin, how i wanted
transformation, how i wanted exchange, the monstera
behind me wide and moving light to make some
sweetness, to grow, to eat, to find some space, can i
do the same with you sitting in me, laughing with
some men, flashing the dark lines between your teeth
*
(18.1757914, -66.1612779)
(37.0902400, -95.7128910)
*
(18.1757914, -66.1612779)
(37.0902400, -95.7128910)
my body built debt from being misused, owned by
men rubbing their hands together, some shrine to the
repetition of the death country, america, hungry and
violent, i was given a small inheritance, i read the
news in english, i read the news in translation, the
machine altering the language, violent deaths of women for
reasons of gender, gently the women of my family
walking through me, fingers tracing fern, carrying my
eyes, their cheeks shrinking them to black curves with
a smile, my faces, what of the silence between us, this
border, femicide a wind sculpting the geology,
recorded by the river water, the ceiba’s old wood, the
hawk moths sipping sugar from flowers doused in
night, body after body beneath the wilting night, what
weapons endure, the empty gun of legislation, a
make-believe budget, apologies, people speaking in a
circle, it’s inside, my body some shrine to the wicked,
of course it travelled with our blood, finding home in
the big country, i was a boy once, learning of ghosts,
the morning cracking me open to offer the shrine on
her face, my mind slow amid the color study, i already
had the loop in me, time braiding in a circle, how to
eat a body not your own, they taught it to me young,
they taught it to me, so what did i owe, rewinding the
heirloom, undoing my name, i found a door inside
me, i’m looking through, i’m looking back, my feet
touching the ground again.
*
(0.0000000, 0.0000000)
