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Lee  May 2017
Orgulloso
Lee May 2017
My heart breaks every spring break
It breaks for kids like me who watch as others visit their home countries
While we cannot leave the USA
We have to sit and watch people butcher bachata
Watch how they're hips refuse to accept something other than Taylor swift
We listen when they come back with stories of how they thought our food was too different and not “Mexican” enough as if all Latin America is Mexico
We hear the laughs they make at our cousins back home for just being themselves
My heart cannot handle the privilege they wear on their sleeves when they come back
Knowing I might never see my own island
How I am thought it is ***** and dangerous
A place where girls should not be left alone
While they get the clean streets, they get to avoid the gangs
How they assault our girls
Don't tell me to just save my money and go next year
It is not that simple
We don't stay in your resorts
We live en el capital y los campos nunca los hoteles y la vida blanco
Aka the places you never set foot
You go to my island
You buy bracelets de mi bandera
You try to live my roots
But complain when I dare show pride for my people
The hypocrisy breaks my heart
It's blood pours onto my all American soil
Is my island nice?
Tell me do the trees sway as if they are dancing to Anthony Santos?
Do the branches act as the leading man guiding the leaves to swing their stems to beat?
Does the Dominican anthem ring in the hearts of the people
A pride that is new and vibrant radiating off their faces
How they have clear all their schedules to make sure you see the highlights of our land
When you eat do you feel as though each bite was made with the love of thousand of abuelas?
Can you envision the hours she spends over a hot gas stove stirring los habichuelas y arroz
Using what little food they have left over to feed you over their own blood?
Tell me does my island make you proud?
It makes my heart filled with joy
To know my people did something right that you would walk the same land as slaves
That somehow we got enough pride to make sure you had a good time that you were safe that you can have whatever you wanted
On my island
Tell me, what left is there to complain about?
Mi isla es mi corazón, mi sueño, es mi vida
Pero to you it is just another week out the calendar
My heart will break every march
Because when you come back you complain how in the Dominican Republic no one spoke to you in English
And I worry, how you think when Dominicans come here we should speak English
But when you come to our home you don't want us to speak our language
Your hypocrisy hurts
My island does all it can to make you happy
But you are never pleased
What more can we do
You take pieces of us and use them in your portrait of appropriation
You take our pride and use it as joke
My heart breaks
For the children like me
Never seeing their land
Except on Instagram in the middle of march
Expo 86'  Dec 2015
Untitled
Expo 86' Dec 2015
Eu já nem sei o que vou fazer amanhã
E se me perguntarem é capaz que minha cabeça exploda
Eu não sei nem o que vou comer
Se como arroz, feijão e macarrão
Ou feijão, arroz e macarrão
Ou macarrão, feijão e arroz
Ou arroz, macarrão e feijão
Khoisan  Nov 2018
Havana nights
Khoisan Nov 2018
The infamous Cuban fog
Roll's of the ceiling
Arroz on Pollo
*** and ice
Flamenca tunes serenade
the
crescent moon
Decadent
bites
Celebrating
Havana Nights
I thought I'd write something
From my bucket list
Poema Code Switching
By Aylin Soto-Aleman, Mercedes Caballero, Jesus Martinez, Marta Silva, Alex Alejandre
16.4.15

El final de una etapa
The end,
The beginning of a new journey
un camino
A un mundo extranjero
Un deseo, un sueño
A dream
Haciendo mi propio path
un camino
rostros nuevos , new failures
historias nuevas , new experiences
a sequel to my story, con hojas rotas
y mojadas    


INMIGRACION

La memoria es un salto
entre continentes
crossing invisible borders
swimming in the rios
corriendo debajo del sol

La memoria es los abuelitos
ancestors cooking arroz y frijoles,
flan, driving through for hamburgers,
popcorn, sipping on horchata
Basilica
No todo lo que brilla es oro
not all rainbows and butterflies,
Clarita y sus cien años
Ruben y sus Tacos del Camino Real
El rancho
Midnight movies
Quiero a quien me quiera
It’s been a long day, without you my friend
Mexicanos al grito de guerra
Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light
Tepechitlan, Jerecuaro, Guanajuato
Long Beach, Argentine, KCK,
Chihuahua,
A Distance Between Us
El puente, the bridge.
Three Little Pigs en casa, at home,
don't step out marranitos,
la llorona te va a llevar

Memory is a leap
between continents
Cruzando fronteras invisibles,
Nadando en los rivers
Running under the sun

Born in different places
Pero las mismas intenciones
This was created by my spanish class and I.
Cuban in America,
you know how my great grandma stung her fingers on lime when the screen door muscled open.
You know the grip when they tell her,
“Your husband is under arrest for conspiracy against the government.”
Your grandpa is also 6.
He watches his father torn from a wicker chair;
this is the last he will be seen for 30 years.
His mother shudders every time his children ask why he is gone;
they are stuffed with mango skin and salt, she is hoping they won’t leak,
hoping the Cuban government doesn’t strip more of her veins,
maybe he will come back. Maybe he will come back.
We know the price they paid for knowledge is twice the wrath they received.
When he is released, my great grandfather is only eyelashes.
His children run deep to him and he does not know. But you do.
Ten days later, he is found hung from the kitchen ceiling,
limes and mangos and salt and his children spilled underneath.

Dear Cuban in America
You and I have spent summer after salt-soaked summer,
staring at our grandfathers as we eat breakfast
you know his pan cubano sprayed with  I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter,
the lemon colored oil creeping into the holes in the bread.
Corn flakes, heavy with whole milk we were never allowed to have at home.
we were seven and waiting for him to say anything,
he was seventy, waiting for us to do the same.
We are too shy and our grandfathers  are not forgiving.
When we does speak, it is too thick,
so we sit quiet peeling mangos of their acidic skin and listen to  his accent tumble by.

When our Abuelos left Cuba, they were 30,
they ran to the U.S. leaving windy promises they wouldn’t stay long.
They were beautiful and crumbled,
and Castro never let them come back.
My Abuelo stumbles on words and pieces of mango
and tells me about his father, his donkey, his ache streaked sister.
He hasn’t been home for 50 years.
Our relatives shatter to this country and he knows what they have left behind.

Dear Cuban American,
I do not know why I say we
Our abuelo ‘s are more Cuban than I can ever try to be.
When I try and speak, the language is molasses
I grasp at a country I say I love.
I am no Cuban American the way you are.
I never got to feel the way a street crumbles under dictatorship,
never taste arroz con pollo the way you had,
never walked with the most beautiful girl in *****,
never clasped a lime stained kitchen.

I didn’t know how much my Abuelo wanted to see the Cuba he left etched onto my palms.
How much he wanted to hear me sing guantanamera
You two know the history of the island,
the red stars and blue stripes,
the shackles and homes falling underneath  palm trees bled out.

Cuban in America,
the years on our grandfather’s wrists grow plenty.
I realize the chances for me to become a true Cuban are slipped.
Now our Abuelo’s sweatshirts are stained with salt and whole milk
they fall asleep on benches and trip in grocery stores.
Our moments are hung  from the kitchen ceiling,
milk, and salt, and mangos, and limes, all spilling.
Alfa  Oct 2018
Arroz con Pollo
Alfa Oct 2018
How do you make your rice?
is it in a ***? a pan? steamed? heated? not at all?

mine is in a frying ***.

Yellow, with pollo from the fresh market.
Peas, y frijoles on the side.

Mix it up, eat it, keep it for later.

Burn the bottom so you can get la chemada part.

If you like the chemada part, not everyone does.
A poem about my personal views on American society. How a bunch of different cultures live together which is why I make references to rice, as different types of rice making shows what culture you come from. I say I like mine in a "frying ***" because that's how I see America, a frying *** and not a "melting ***" as they say. Whereas a melting *** mixes cultures well, a frying *** keeps people at the bottom "burnt" like "chemada" (burnt rice at the bottom of the pan).
Chris T Mar 2014
while i do love
the taste of unhealthy
t.v. dinners for every meal
and i do enjoy
the slobbery salisbury steaks,
extra salty ramen noodles
and those little tuna cans,
it's great to come home
after a long emotional
roller coaster week
and have abuela cook up
some arroz con garbanzos
and unas buenas chuletas,
get the latest family gossip,
comments on how
el gobernador is being
the biggest pendejo
in power at the moment,
watch the news,
see how many were killed this week,
and just shake our heads
as the island crumbles into Detroit like
madness (at least we've got great beaches),
ah but yes,
abuela's cooking,
what i need to forget
the girl with the pretty hair.
Came home from the university this weekend and my grandparents came over to our house and grandma's cooking some mean *** pork chops!

This is all i need at the moment.
Sputnik Andrade Oct 2012
Te voy a escribir un poema, dice la voz grave, de padre severo, la que te da miedo, porque eso es lo que hago.

Porque así hiero, así deshumanizo, así  vuelvo invisible lo delineado, lo certero. Escribiendo transformo la carne y la sangre y los huesos en grafito que se borra, en caracteres que vuelan y se pierden.

Así te vuelvo a ti, todo, en nada.

Eras un gato. Eras lluvia ominosa. Fuentes sin agua, mar encerrado. Eras belleza donde nadie quería mirar. Nadie se acerca jamás a lo derruido y a lo gris a lo que huele a abandonado, extranjero.

Me gustaba llorar en tu desolación. En la tierra húmeda que estaba bajo tus pies. En las manos siempre vacías.

Eras extraordinario.

Un caballero exiliado, un detective medieval, un magnate honesto.

Eras, eras, eras.

Déjame convertirte, ahora, en algo más. Ahora que has dejado de ser, que incluso perdiste la piel, el cabello, el brillo.

Eres Siddharta, joven de nuevo camino. Eres el Buda. Renunciaste a todo [polvo, ropa usada, brillo] Te volviste nada. Un mesías. El Uno.

Poesía. ¿Tú?

Tú no eres poesía, tu no eres las copas de los árboles que se mecen [se mecen] junto con el caprichoso baile del viento. ¿Tú?

Comes y amas y vives y haces y dejas de hacer porque ya es de día y ya es de noche. ¿Tú?

Siddharta Eclipsado por la Luz. Siddharta sin voz. Sólo Om. Om. Om.

Eras el soldado sin nombre. Todos ellos, deshechos por la guerra, con lámparas de aceite en la mirada, pasos tenues.

Eras.

Eso es lo que eres. La exaltación [mía] del pasado, el vivir en los recuerdos, la nostalgia, la niñez difuminada, antes de anochecer, una sonrisa inocente. No es un vacío o un espacio sin polvo entre los libros, la marca de que un cuerpo que estuvo entre las sábanas.

Eres el pasado que murió y ya no existe. No eres, dios reencarnado.

Te volviste santo, te sentaste y te transformaste en piedra tallada, te cubriste de musgo y de olvido, solamente. Todo lo demás es demasiado humano.

Siddharta, inútil cualquier intento. Porque no puedes ganarme. Yo soy la pluma que escribe. Yo te invento, yo te insuflo vida y yo ya no quiero dártela, porque estás intentando escribir y eso no te lo puedo permitir. Eso no lo puede hacer.

Yo soy Jesús de Judea, vivo, muerto, con luz propia, crucificado, envuelto en rosas, en todas partes, los puentes, las manchas, los cuellos, las malas palabras, el ****, el día y la noche, tinta, papel de arroz, copal y oro. Todo, todos.

[

Entre dos montañas y un río,
el Buda más grande de la Tierra se sienta.
En su oreja izquierda, sin embargo,
vive una familia de golondrinas.

]

Esta es mi venganza, piedra verde, chiquillo de la nada.
liz  Oct 2012
not yet.
liz Oct 2012
What was likely apple jacks
that resembled arroz con leche
was the primary factor in
an eleven
year
anxiety
attack

the frozen inability to enter
muraled cafeterias
clement j zablocki
you hold torture chambers

"call my mom I am sick"
distract me from my nausea
my mental nausea

I am not ready for this confrontation
I began to write this, but stopped abruptly because I feel as though it is just not time for me to talk about it.  I am not ready.
Geografia (2)**

Havia a lua a conquistar: magno evento.
Mas a vida corria normal em solo firme
Ah, e os sustos: o estômago puro vento
Eu silente, exausto, adormecia inerme.
Entanto, no cerrado havia muitas frutinhas.
E havia a revolução, e reuniões de oração.
Quando dormia no meio do Pai-Nosso.
Uma centena de orantes à espera de um milagre.
Então Seu Roque viajava para o Interior –
Com seu carrossel de slides e nossas fotos
Não havia quem não doasse alguma coisa:
- Um capado, um saco de arroz, bananas
Em cachos; voltava no fordinho velho
Mas bem fornido; tão feliz, e barbado.
& The United Brothers enviavam cartas.
Dentro dessas meu primeiro bookmark
E o desejo de conhecer o estrangeiro...
Na escola dominical, aprendi os 10 Mandamentos.
Ficava triste nas tardes de domingo; ainda agora.
Um gosto de mangaba e o dedão do pé doendo
Como quando chutava lobeiras em lugar de bolas.

O abrigo era o melho lugar do mundo limpo
O quintal; o milharal capinado; havia o Careta
Nosso cavalo; o Thinka – latindo para o Leão.
Éramos tão felizes quando banhados à espera
De vovó Cecília e seus doces de buritis...
Jesus, como era o teu nome chamado.
Até que o Filemon teve convulsão e tudo desabou
Sobre nossas cabeças como o Apocalipse de S. João.
Fim.
./.
Poesia, BetoQueiroz, Memorias
wind pollenated                      
easily digestible
a sticky grain, rice

— The End —