This REFUSAL poem was originally accepted by Palette Poetry magazine but was withdrawn by the author in protest.
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In this madrugada, I don’t know where it ends.
So,
I type into each box a Salvadoran search.
The algorithm answers phenomenologically.
As in,
my research tells me this American paper trail
will take my life
time.
Skimming the declassified receipts for ruination,
I track the gun-slings southward.
I scavenge the NYT records—what gossip
the war machine’s failure.
You might say that in lieu of my fury,
this poem contains questions.
It wants footnotes I keep searching for in family.
I mean to say,
memory surges like red ribbons. I never ask
my parents, what was it like to punctuate a war?
Be born and escape in such short living.
So that I may speak to colony, every word
I’ve been modeled is a carbine conjugation.
Radiowave, radiowave— my coordinates are insurgent, my allegiance is
confidential, my conspiracy,
empirical ,
tonight ,
like other nights. The darkness in the company of the alive .
Balsam throbs of bullet ants, holed leaves clinging glint larval
silk
bright like bone. Imagine our wars over and
we dream
with our lands in every breath .
Look
el palo de achiote \ điều nhuộm stains Vietnam too .
And Atlacatl potentials considered for Iraq .
When dry palm and bamboo kindling
how many roots splinter ?
Echo off
dawn dropwing dragonflies .
If my family left behind momentos ,
be placenta buried under a ceiba; be a wooden coffre cooing
a little conch shell caliche .
Feel the silence
of bats land , a gentle kiss of moths
on bare chest like thumbing banana
leaves .
Smell
the life
of fried – fish oil behind the ears of a lover ; your lover ,
the moon .
I want to remember a language
of only grasshoppers , geckos ,
salt
marsh,
heartbreak
grass .
Flame lilies .
