esperar is a most abusive verb

I used to be an angel, but now
I’m an angel.

I used to soar over glacier-cold cruelty, rain bombs of indifference on the streets. I used to sip blood like tea. Under my jolly, jagged feet, mountains and mountains of laughter envied me. The heights I knew were dusty – yes, its clouds a shimmering ironic – yet hypocrisy was tastier than dirt. Than the mud that demanded justice while shaking their legs in ways foreign to my body.

I used to will my voice into popularity – into backwards, thorny cheers. The clippers at my feet would sometimes roar at me, but never clawed at my hygiene. I often promised gifts from afar; they were often delicate glitter. Don’t get me wrong: my cape was musky, my legs rejected raindrops – I was but the last duckling in line, a settler of the lowest skies. It is true, nonetheless, that my cries would dance with lightning.

Now, I’m an angel:
en el mal sentido de la palabra, bueno.

I beg for perdones and permisos as I share my nervousness with each ergonomic chair in this office–or that one. I sign off my emails in a sheepish, elegant manner, not warmly. My boots are lingering swamps that fail to whistle properly. My boots are a rusty privilege. When I walk in slanted streets, I keep my fists inside my pockets. Gratefulness is all I have for the chains that massage my feathers.

I used to be an angel, but now
I understand why some see curses in blessings, why some see sacred in vice. Up, up, and above, the grounded unknown was clay for my chortles; these days, my definition is my mission. My compassion for palm trees has grown. My passion no longer belongs to me.

But did it ever?

Infatuation, the Highest Stage of Capitalism

sometimes I wanna kiss your mustache, Lenin figurine,
tilt and twist it with my tongue
as if you were clay and not memories.

I pause before the key reaches my nose and notice your eye
– barely present, to the side, a detail or treasure –
and guilt invades me

for a second.

then I remember that opium is a mindset,
that my nostrils are free from the pressure of crosses,
so I figure my redness does not come from thunder.

sometimes, Lenin figurine, sometimes
I tape your poorly faded eyes with faux leather
and bury your wooden skin in my left pocket

just in case.

while I breathe the breezes of Bushwick
in search of an accent to match mine,
I rub your mariners cap as if it were a lamp or a gland.

I trust your spit will be the gel my hair needs
to resist a style that was imposed on me, to fashion
an awkward answer that’ll make the bored ones revolt.

oh, Lenin figurine, waspish figurine,
will your hands crack out of their place,
shatter the limits of lumber and alienation
to choke me while I pretend to sleep?

when the moment comes for my eyelids to stumble
and liberation becomes the root of pillow
– for effects, I do believe, may precede their cause –
I hope you turn sideways
and keep me conscious with your callousness.

esperar is a most abusive verb. you wait as the maelstrom of languages and gasps surrounds you, takes your amazement and crushes it into crossness, reminds you your humour is but an inside joke. you wait as the bullets you left behind crawl up behind your ear and promise you there is no tomorrow, there is only vanity. you wait for a number to embody while your skin waits tables for scholars whose concept of empathy’s restricted to dictionaries.

esperar is a most amusing verb. you replay gags and mishaps and misadventures in your head as you wait to be the joke, as your accent builds up valor to become imitation on weekends. your nerves emit half-melodies as you remember the gun against the face, the hands against the wall, the groin in other hands while you waited to be let go. your opinions flirt with fragility, crumble into fantasies, jump entire oceans while expecting the worst.

esperar: to wail with an umbrella below your eyelashes, to waive forgiveness and noise.

to find an identity in a line, to hope for redemption after hunger.

to waste under obligation, to intuit yourself as a stamp or a trophy.

esperar is a most abusive verb.

G. H.

I stare at the beautiful everything
the bagel left in your teeth.

romance en la lejanía

my cowboy hat rolls under my bed
and I ask my threads,

¿cómo es que es tan gruesa
mi piel?

I dig my nails deep into my forearms
as I channel my boredom away from my guests

and only find puddles of clay and unsent emails.

I try to tear apart my ribs in search
of a memory worth stapling to my sleeves.

I open my mouth and turn my tongue into paper and ink
as if literature had any meaning for our bodies.

an ending is a beginning is a story.

a tunnel is a tunnel is a tunnel.

The Slowest Shape

Contrary to common conceptions
The slowest shape is the circle.

As spheres and corpses roll down cliffs
Built from the clay of our garbage bins
Time becomes a rubber band, a blanket, a duvet.

Time becomes a cage that knows no keys, no locks,
But the withering slime of a snail
– A sentence in an empty paragraph, another semicolon.

And when our fingers criss-cross into tunnels
And our eyes ignore their limitations blissfully
The curvature of our recollections twists into a strip.

The slowest shape is the circle–the funniest, the most melancholy.
Unlike alleyways or buses
It doesn’t believe in the dampness of destiny.

The slowest shape is the circle
And we are the colours from within, fearful of breaking through its edges.

some Americans have no idea
what true cringe is about.

(they have, of course, many ideas
we migrants observe and pray to from afar
that could only happen on their highways.)

some Americans don’t understand
what raising a flag over a wasteland or singing an anthem in a disco
entails – what laughing at our own strife
as we break our molars at dawn implies.

a fist on our chest is ridiculous, we know,
when trumpets predict our soon-to-come failure
in the stadium or the polls,

yet we puncture our hearts at every moment
our sorrows are public display.

[vive tu vida, / con alegría / escucha bien lo que te estoy diciendo,]
we chant, we giggle, owning up our tragedies
and abandoning our dignity,

in the center of the dancefloor
as if the rest were chess pieces.

how does singing jingles
from dictatorial campaigns
induce us into total frenzy, into fun, into forgetfulness?

some Americans don’t know how
a meme can contain multitudes
of screams and sorrow
behind devilish smiles.

and promise ridiculous laughs
instead of dread
when it reaches out for phones.

whenever we, thick-skinned animals,
faceless clones of those who denounce us
for reasons good and absent, fly over flies
as to simulate sympathy
with rubber-laden rabies,

we laugh at our interactions – with Americans, I mean –
and thank the lapachos
for giving us shade under darker deserts.

but perhaps I’m too harsh, my cousins from up north
– or down south, whatever, the globe is butter
for our fingers – landlords and guardians of mine, of all.

we suffer in different ways and kick our roommates’
shoulders with different degrees of strength,

but our oily, viscous hands have the same creases
and all of our tongues taste like soap.

Boiler Room

although I never expected dembow
within the walls of this cavern,

although I never needed the MDMA
to mitigate my demons and master my anxiety,

although I never thought that lighting a cigarette
would make the flies flounder around me,

I stepped on radiant shoes
and asked their owners,

[¿y dónde está mi gente?