I made it from hot to holy
from holy to hot
from toothpicks next the counter
to a foreign metropolis
from palm oasis to squished buildings
so pressed at the sides, they can only grow upwards
I made it from feeling like fire, a woman at the top of Neguá to feeling like a fire and all of life

The end of sorrow came on the second day as I understood that as I lived I died

I have sung 365 songs with your name in them butnever have they touched your shoulder. In the dark alleys, holding friends up as they tell me how angry they are. How disillusioned they feel. In the morning hours I lay our all the  evidence on the dirt street like chess pieces over a board not to try to convince but to show them that their  “ ****** up__”  as **** as it has been is also what life has been. No redrawing,undo, no control z but that the  flash of light is also as brilliant and potent as the jet black in their hair, in the alley, and in the hands of who ever hurt them their neglect.

On the chess piece I lay a shoe for times I was dragged from under the sofa and beat for leaving a can of coke unfinished, on the board I leave a piece of hair for the chunk that girls in elementary school ripped off my head after school, on the board I leave picture of a naked Barbie for the times I was molested, and to the corner I leave a small receipt that was left in my bag the night after I was too drunk to say no and did not know to call it **** until a few years later. On the board I leave a flight ticket for the love for a man for which I crossed an ocean, and in the middle I leave a white flower for all the times I willed myself up alone from the floor.

I can only show them. Some days I leave some parts out; some friends only know some parts and some of them have no laid their pieces on the chest board and we all all wept for the things that have been lost


Cried in a living room to Marley “no woman, no cry”


At the end I throw over the chess board and watch the chess pieces fly off in different direction. So what
So what
So what
I still have this life to live

tucked in her ******* is the paragon
of devotion, dripping
from her ****** into unfruitful
barrels of nothingness, she mothers
the absence of empty fridges
and messy closets.
"Soon" she whispers
soon there will be someone else here to
drink of her milk

I halt my jogging to stare at the moon

I forget the moon is a floating rock  is suspended in space
how marvelous everytime I remember

poem writing is a slow art
cannot just cultivate
your mind, you must train
your senses,
your eyes, sculpt
a beautiful mind
and become a deep sea diver coming up
for air at just the right speed

the art of poesy is the art of living
with age more profound

we were born
the same year. we have three
white hairs near our forehead. we will
become two silver foxes,
you and I.

you ask me
if we can take the elevator
to the roof.

the cool air is irresistible.
i stare at you,
as you pull your shirt off,
over the roof top
and I proceed to pull
mine off too.

there is no difference to me,
that you are labeled as a “man” and I
as I “woman”.
I am too old for gender norms to keep a sweaty shirt over me, when I could cool
down too.

the cool air is cool.
my chest is a chest.
you and I exit the web of fiction
and emerge naked of them,
as if rescued from a sunken ship
–we inhale the air fresher
because we chose.
we chose.