1. Prólogo
I am the hurricane, and I am the gull
caught in the wind. Even stretching out my gaze
I can find no one like me. Do I have sisters?
I was raised in exile by my brothers
and set at an early age
to copy out, by hand, by candlelight, through all the dark hours,
the record of their pain. This has been my task:
I am the hurricane, I am the high cliff
above the sea. How can it be otherwise?
For my hand remembers what it wrote,
these words of suffering become a part of my flesh,
my cells absorb the essence of lives that pass
through my ink, my blood, over my lips,
how can it be otherwise? I was made for this
crying-out, made to stand outside,
surrounded by winds, calling the winds to me,
sending them out again in search. I am the hurricane.
And I am also the lamp
swinging from a wooden pole
on the shore – who is like me?
I was made by my brothers,
have I any sisters?
2. Suspension
He hovered above the rooftop,
four inches from the red tile.
The wind picked up and his long hair
moved and brushed his
bare back. His skin prickled with chill.
He raised his arms
slowly, his fingers spread apart
as though to take hold of the moon.
He screamed
without sound.
All the pain of being
who he had to be
filtered out of him,
into the night air, where,
high above
the people who couldn’t fly,
the moonlight changed it into peace.
3. Not the Devil
Alarma – the devil
sometimes lurks in bathrooms
endlessly pretending
to do up his pants.
Fleeing, you may be washed upon the beach
see angels crowd around you
and endlessly wash your body
until someone comes to cover your nakedness.
Do you have a light?
Do you have a place to stay?
Do you have a lover?
Is your lover healthy,
is he happy,
do you make dinner on Sundays
or does he?
When was the last time
you talked to your mother?
Does she know about your lover?
Does she know you are still alive?
Rebelde, revolución, libertad, fidelidad;
these words are written on your skin in gold.
Policía, prisión, droga, SIDA;
these words are written on your soul in fire.
Chico, chica, hombre, mujer –
do these words even have sounds?
Arriba – the devil
is in forgetting, is in
the failure to love.
4. Looking For My Brother in the Barrio
I looked for you all last night,
like a whisper I floated through the barrio,
and left no reflection in the pools of gathered rainwater:
in your world I have no substance,
or none worth telling. I watched at lighted windows
outside private bars filled with men’s arms
and legs and skinny torsos and here and there a paunch
and heads, some of them bald, some dark and shiny with hair oil,
and laughter that rose from the caverns of isolation,
and laughter that fell like soot from the furnace of hatred
where men are fired, here, to make them whole.
I peeked into the swirls or a glass of fino,
sniffed at the last traces of someone’s cigar,
but you were not there.
Late, late, after anyone flesh-bound would have given up,
I found you, you were standing without an impermeable in the drizzle
on the cobbled corner of Concepción and Revolución,
you were asking him if he had a light,
I watched him take his matchbook from his purse
light a match and hold it to your cigarette
between cupped hands, a kiss more intimate
than the kind that relies on flesh.
You put your arm around his waist,
he wobbled a moment on his high heels
then leaned into you, the perfect gentleman,
with your deep deep eyes and your strength
that rears up and stands tallest
at night, when you are walking alone, and then you find
someone else who is alone. You two walked off into the rain,
smiling, already at home, and I
had only wanted to see that you were well, and you are.
5. Alarma
Alarma – he should have jumped at the touch
on his thigh, but he just looked up from the long basin of the urinal
into inscrutable brown eyes, zipped up his fly and followed
the trail of fire those long fingers left behind them
out to the bar where the stranger
bought him a rum and coke with a red plastic straw
and he let the stranger walk him home;
they parted with a kiss at the iron gate and he went to bed alone
feeling like his heart was filled with mariachis
and his veins with starlight.
They came just in time to surprise him in the dark
but led him away with a bloody face in the early daylight.
They timed it so both flashlight-beam and black van
could be employed to maximum effect. Did anyone bother to promise
the stranger that he would never have to see this gaunt face again?
No matter. There are ways to change politics with startling suddenness
(a mind can be made up in, say, the time it takes a finger-bone to snap)
but, as they say, there is no such thing as rehabilitation
for those who are raros from birth.
6. Motivos
"Oye, m'hija," said the bisabuela
who sat on the porch of the village general store
minding rum and maíz and Coca-Cola,
smoking a pipe while silver hairs sprouted on her chin
and day after day the hot Caribbean sun
rolled its heavy fingers lovingly over her great brown body –
¿Qué me va a decir, abuela?
Escucharé sus leyendas,
sus poesías, sus llamadas a la batalla,
cuarenta días y cuarenta noches, y más,
si continua la canción.
"M’hija" (does she call me daughter?)
"what work are you doing here, among your brothers?"
Madre, I am here to build a bridge, to gather stories,
to find my family, to show my love,
I was raised by my brothers, maricones americanos,
jotos, usted sabe, soy una de los otros.
"And what do you know of us, here,
under the shadow of your people,
what do you know of my sons, whose favors
your brothers, maricones americanos, purchase
for a song?"
It is a sad song.
(I weep – for what do I know of chichifos in alleys
and bars, whose services are bought,
whose bodies are broken?)
"M’hija, you are here because you know
something of love. What is your work here?"
(I remember.) I am here to dance.
Even as I sit here
filling your pipe from my pouch
and listening to the sun
and considering my motives,
I am dancing.
She rumbles, she rhumbas, the glitter of her eyes
has an ancient beat,
the stillness of her great brown body
is a gathering of song
within the castle of her skin. She rumbles,
a great sigh, untranslatable, the voice of centuries.
"Es bueno. It is good."
7. Mother’s Lament
~~~ Now I can tell you this story. Padre Borja tells me there is no way to be certain, but I know – I conceived my son on the anniversary of my mother’s death: such disrespect, Dios must have been upset (if only for a moment) and he touched my child in the womb, and made him strange. Strange – I don’t know – de los otros. I swear I didn’t love him too much – they say that does it? – but a mother cannot possibly, cannot possibly love too much. As though the moon could follow the earth too closely. I begin to think - a mother cannot possibly love her son enough.
~~~ I remember his father – as the moon orbits the earth, the earth must move around the sun, and so it was with them. One cool evening when the asphalt sang and the city trees seemed to rustle of their own wind , so alive was the air with sheer humanity, so intoxicated were the men on life and manhood and power, his father tried to beat the maricón out of him with a leather strap.
~~~ Blood can be wiped from a floor of azulejos, ceramic tiles, blue and white, and any color, I suppose, much more easily than one would think. The task was more difficult when I cried, so I didn’t cry. Padre Borja tells me my cross is to love though all the world, it seems, hates.
~~~ That is not my cross. To love is no task – pain, besides, must be inherent in love, and where is the cross in that? My cross is the nothingness of his absence, the void into which I pour my love, the void that takes it all, and demands more, forever. He did not stay to lose the rest of his blood in this house where things are so easily lost (blood, respect, money, sons). He disappeared into the wind. That is my cross.
8. Sin Esposas
Poeta – will you write this down,
and will you write the prison, or will it be the sea?
Sorrow has stretched out your arms,
but, sin esposas, you can slip out through the window to dance.
There will be stars to welcome you, and golden streetlamps,
and canopies of red silk reaching from eave to eave above the callejón.
Your lover is a poet, too: you both write with your tongues
ghazals, all up and down each other’s rib cage.
You two are your own nation. You are the dawn
and the flag I fly above my fortress of words.
You are the lush bosque de lluvia that ever gives birth to itself.
Your bones shake in a stiff wind, but they are tied tightly with leather cords.
In this new nation you are also the wardens
keeping out the fierce dogs of old laws, keeping your love inside to warm itself at the fire.
9. Yer Ballad
para A.H.G., con cariño
The troubadour I knew in Atlanta never fell,
couldn’t even be said to have burned out –
so feverish were those last days, he glittered
and grew brighter, so that finally to look at him
burned, and he disappeared beyond the range of my vision.
Matanzas! How could I save him?
I was still carrying the rusty arms of the República,
Shouting, This is what made us!
while snipers in his jungle took shots at him
with shiny metralletas loaded with bullets
of the grim consciousness of self:
this blood is contaminated, this body is on fire,
this kind of life will kill you in the end.
Bolívar, I invoke your sacred name; in Gran Colombia,
the utopian Latin America of your unfathomable mind,
are men consumed by fever?
His father knew when his son was nine
that he would grow up maricón,
and never spoke to him in kindness again.
He found himself in the back room of a bathhouse,
First saw the blinding flash of recognition
while being fucked, and always afterward did the fucking
himself, to keep the light away.
I myself had to walk three city blocks behind him,
he was so bright, even then.
When he sat in the bar and persuaded a dark-eyed Cuban boy
that he was safe to touch,
where was the República then? Where Gran Colombia?
Only the old beams of Atlanta sheltered him
and the combined energy of the people in the bar
and all the people who had given their numbers to him, ever.
I wondered if his mere presence
would ignite the city, burn it down again, to the ground,
but he got up and left holding the Cuban boy’s hand
went back to the Cuban boy’s room
in a very dark part of town, and made love
like the energy it created could run all the streetlights
that had burned out in the Cuban boy’s neighborhood
and, indeed, afterwards, the barrio
was noticeably brighter.
There are Latino Nights in bars all over America
for expatriate maricones to pool their fire
and homegrown queers to get turned on
by the flashing of their eyes.
It happens all the time:
one twisting burning raging spear of light
goes out of control
hovers at the edge of our perception
its fire just beyond comprehension
and is taken up into heaven.
10. The Vision
The vision comes to me on the bus
from the farm to the struggle:
I am surrounded by laughter
and sweat and chickens, there is salt in the air,
this is the tropics, beside me
two bronze women are holding hands
and soft pink sparks are flying.
The man across from me, wearing flowers, is a poet:
he stands and gives his seat to a grizzled abuelo
who pats his hand with bony fingers
and smiles, saying, "Tú me acuerdas de mi hijo."
Pure poetry.
At once everybody turns their bright eyes to my face:
Do we trust you, tortillera norteamericana?
The swelling of thought in my mind:
Do you know me? Do you recognize me?
The sudden rush of my pulse, a rapid tattoo,
a slight fever, a glitter, fear.
I am outside the glossy pages of the magazine.
This is not the private party of wealthy white queers,
where everyone drinks Corona with lime
looks over the white deck rail to the pure white beach
and talks about how much alike we all are.
A blue wave rises and washes the hotel away:
we on the bus are far from that, and the sudden inrush
of the great fact of the sea over land
cools the air. The tension breaks away.
There are small private smiles of people with deep
and painful roots, there is a loosening of the web,
a confusion of sex, race, mind, humor, voice,
a place is made for me,
there is welcome.
11. Lesbian Bedrooms Revisited
The geese lift off,
five flocks,
from the artificial pond
behind our house.
Water boils in the tea
kettle, a stack of books
calls me back
under the blanket.
Half the bed
is still warm from
her body, the scent of
her shampoo
has become part
of the weave,
is the silkiness
in the white
cotton sheets.
Last night
we reached out
for each other
in the dark
and the energy
created by our
lovemaking
joined a shining band
of lovemaking
between women and
between men
that circles the world.
I felt like we
were making love
to Africa,
to the great green continent
of Latin America,
to the islands sparkling
in the Caribbean,
to three billion
people
in China,
to New York,
so much healing
energy, so much love,
and the geese, flying south,
scattering love.
The journey
is not over
it has simply
led me back
home.