on a diner tv i watched a report
about a woman who found an injured bird
and saved it.
it was a slow news day, just afternoon fluff but
there’s something remarkable about someone,
a new yorker, no less,
who walks slow enough to notice the pigeons,
who sees one that’s hurt, and stops,
who, with two good hands, picks it up,
and keeps it warm against her chest,
who strokes its head, smooths its feathers,
tells it “soon, you’ll feel better”,
tells it things will be OK,
who takes the uptown C train
to bring it to a shelter,
and doesn’t care about the fare,
about the blood on her isotoners,
or really, even, about the reporter
who asks her why she would bother,
to which she answers
“what, you wouldn’t?”

you’re staring at a wrench display
in a failing sears 10 minutes before closing
and don’t recognize the reflection in the stainless steel.
you’ve been here a million times,
run your fingers along band saws a million times,
memorized the store’s playlist, learned “Love Hurts" by Nazareth
but you’re still trying to find something that connects,
something to retrace the steps to what pushed you out the door,
placed cold hands in empty pockets, made you stop
to buy cigarettes and brought you here again.
your blood pumps slower in places of transition,
only walked through to get to the mall
or back through to poorly parked cars
and you know a lot about
being used to move on
but left behind.
an employee asks if you’re alright
and you say yes
because you know they’re running out their shift
and don’t want to deal with your ****
and how could you tell them
that today, your skin feels foreign.
maybe you’ll find something in
winter coats and blackout curtains
but until then you make a home
on a display mattress
because you only live in liminal spaces.
you’re only grounded
between phases, in inbetweens.
you rely on uncertainty and in this economy,
the sears might be gone before you realize you’ll miss it.

everybody hates chris hums on the television.
during commercial breaks, i stare at the ceiling,
feeling bed rest marooned.
cocooned in sweat-soaked blankets
dotted with crumpled kleenex
i ask myself for the first time:
“why am i alive?”

and it’s not that i want to die
although the strep throat
swelling up my lymph nodes
is hardly worth staying for,
but rather i ask what it means to be 10
and not able to see far beyond then
and where i fit into the hopscotch
criss-cross applesauce chaos
that is the world beyond the playground fence.

once im well again i ask my friends.
matthew strokes his hairless chin, then shrugs,
he doesn’t have time for existentialism,
he’s running late for cello lessons
so the question bounces off him like a
handball off a wall:
with a slap and a thump back down.

i ask tyler now.
he cares about me, but girls are gross.
he has a reputation to uphold,
which he won't if he tells me so.
he grasps for an answer,
not heartless, but manhunt tough,
“well, you make me laugh,
i think that’s good enough.”

that summer, he moved to texas.
facebook says he works at 7-11
and i wonder if on the night shift
when customers stop trickling in
and he’s mopping up puddles of slurpee
he remembers wrestling me on black top,
arms tangled in impossible knots,
fifth grade love and skinned knee blood
flowing between blows
and still laughs.

I was born with hitchhiker’s thumbs,
so I think you’ve always known I was transient.
You settled down on an island,
stranded us on the Atlantic,
hoping i’d glean meaning from the shore.
While you worked, I perfected my breaststroke.
The “Great Dominican Hope”
was hardly worth the boarding pass
you creased in a sweaty fist
back when Clinton was still president
and Old Glory still felt like a safety blanket.
You burned a prayer candle for every night I didn’t call,
ran calloused fingers down rosary beads
in the hopes that you’d see me
in some way other than old photographs.
7 years old in a Communion dress,
that’s how you remember me.
like i’m not 30 miles away but six feet deep,
I looked so grounded in church pews.
You still save me a seat.

or at least
you're not supposed to admit that they are
but everything is about love
or lack thereof
so, i think wholeness
is a lot to expect.
i think my chest
is gonna rattle no matter
who tries to fill it,
but i still wish for quiet.
i want stillness in my breaths,
and maybe i need to hold them
but maybe i need to hold him
and i think wholeness
is a lot to expect,
but regret stings less than loneliness
so i still write poems about love.

The coquí’s screech, at its sonic peak
reaches 80 decibels, as loud as
the lawnmower my father
breaks his back over.

We’d rather hear the frogs.

Little throats balloon for
KO - KEE, KO - KEE
a lullaby warm like the
water they wade in.

All of 1 or 2 inches, but
their songs bounce off tin roofs like
rainstorms in hurricane season.

The children are growing used to the call
but the adults resist, they insist
it’s not what they grew up with.

Invasive species in the USA,
best to exterminate, they’re too
loud anyway.

Connected by that evil eye string
My end, cracked pottery
your end, porcelain
white
Why must you look like forced bloodlines?

Why must you find pride in hair fine
Like strands thicken with sin?
Like Satan coils each kink?
like your grandmother wasn’t so black
it was her epithet?

Did La Vieja Negra love her melanin?
Did she try to wash it away en el Rio Blanco,
taking steel wool to wrinkled skin
until her chains sparkled again?

Mami, what do you think of when you look at me?
Bruised fruit of your womb,
browning,
fallen too far from the tree?