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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

a glazed mirage in street lamp glow:

i only like the snow because you do.
icy lace mends beaten pavement
til i forget a world un-hidden,
glitter-ridden before the slush,
before the fuss of bustling morning.

shimmering streets, a whispered brilliance,
only im awake to see it.
still it’s ours,
though you are sleeping
i will marvel for us both.

when i asked my best friend to punch me in the face

i was serious.
i knew he never would
but i wanted him to
bless me with a fist,
put knuckles to my skin
and hit me like he meant it.

there’s some crimson catharsis
in watching veins split,
in oxidizing spit,
old penny drip through broken teeth.
metallic sweet,
bleeding
is healing.

im drunk, still drinking
and i want him to hurt me.
not because it’s him
or because i think i deserve it
i won’t remember in the morning
but right now, i need a feeling
i need connection loudly,
want to have every synapse shouting

YOU’RE HERE!!!!
YOU’RE HERE!!!!!!!!
YOU’RE HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!
_______________­__

when i asked my best friend to punch me in the face
i meant it.
two rounds of king’s cup in,
our other friend’s head in the toilet
and cloudy chance surrounding harlem
he slipped on boxing gloves
curled leather around his thumbs,
put his dukes up
and connected with empty air.
“im on my mcgregor ****”
tequila drip and ***** spit,
he was laughing.
i wished that i’d been hit.
a quick split lip to remember it
because come morning i wouldn't
recall him walking me to the train
as i zig-zagged in the rain
like it was my first day on brand new legs.
he held an umbrella over my head
his favorite coat was dripping wet, yet
he insisted i needed it more.
“let me know when you make it home”
but it sounded more
like a warning.
time square’s so empty at 2 in the morning.
down 42nd street with keys between knuckles
but i refused to look over my shoulder,
sometimes adrenaline
is adrenaline
is adrenaline.

old lives relinquished to a season,
we take back our natal names.

these days, some things sound the same,
like the mergansers in hook creek.

the flightpath when i try to sleep
still buzzes over like an auspice.

summer skin, the end of august,
all the freckles peel away.

i’ll skip stones across the bay
until the sun sweats through the night,

until time’s passing feels right,
until mosquitos **** me dry.

delayed, service changed
we are the trailblazers
struggling through stone and soil
and motor oil slicks,
slip on the gap
WATCH IT!

we are the city rats,
scurrying between streets,
along rails that could **** us
and that have.
service changes, trains collide
we take deep breaths, and swipe,

we cant swim so we'll slide
through sunken subway lines.
at show time we'll roll our eyes
but smile on the sly.
we're in this **** together
so delays aside, we ride.

Sparrows tumbled from my throat,
which is to say that my Grandfather is on the phone
and my Spanish is not what it used to be.
I spin silky yarns across the sea
of an American Dream he’s only seen in telenovelas.
He wants to know what mom left home for
so I fill sidewalk cracks with 24 karat gold
and turn graffiti into stained glass marvels.
He drinks in my descriptions like communion wine,
savors each syllable like it’s the crimson Blood of Christ
and I pray that he believes me.
God, I pray that he believes.
The heat hasn’t worked for weeks
but I paint him a fireplace,
a winding spiral staircase,
a home mud could never dream of.
I don’t mention the growing mold
or how when it rains, it leaks,
or the landlord tired of bounced checks
or how mom cries when she thinks i’m asleep
but through the sprawling, tangled wires
i’ll give abuelo the world, and tonight,
he’ll sleep better than ever before.

we sink half an inch every year
"soon, we'll be up to our ears
in water"

not a creature of fury, just of habit
the moon pulls her to churning, to crashing.
hotter water temper tantrums
rush the brine into our basements
soaking scrapbooks in salt
until it crystallizes faces

and yet i cannot blame the marsh

for reclaiming what was never ours
and taking even what was as penance.
but i refuse to condemn us
for shaping shorelines into lives
because things are so much clearer
when they turn with the tides.
we’ll grow gills in time,

we have to.

the ones who stay on land
could never handle shifting sands
don’t know we cling onto the inlet
with white-knuckled hands.
they never grew from buried roots,
seeds are just flotsam in the sea
so they’ll call Frank O’Toole crazy
when he can’t bring himself to leave.

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 heavens were born fatherless
and so were we.
Under Yúcahu’s sun,
we stretch like saplings.

He paints vessels under skin,
swollen rivers, olive green,
rivers blue for crimson sweet,
brackish reds spanned out like trees.

Atabey’s fertile earth
cradles burgeoning seeds
like salt crystals cradle
the waters of her beach.

But dirt that isn’t hers bares
strange fruit, growth
disturbed.
You need a visa
to see palm fronds
spawn maple leaves.