I look at the fractured streets
littered with broken promises
peeling billboards peddling luxury to the wrong audience
the contorted vertebrae of this country's spine
and I mourn
the death of the American Dream.
I see it lying at my feet with every step
like the broken-winged bird from childhood fables.
"Fix me," she wheezes.
I tried once, but it died in my hands.
Apparently,
"The Dream" used to be two cars
but now it's two good fists
the wisdom to know when enough is enough
and the strength to say it.
I was born too late to remember anything else.
Here lies the American Dream,
bruised and battered by those who vowed to protect her
doused in oil and set aflame
by misdirection
misdemeanors
and Miss Universe.
Here lies the American Dream
who was born from revolution
and died in its absence
who waited for a day that never came
who lived long enough to see the fruit of her labor
become a raisin in the sun.

The grown-ups have lied
Your pillow fort can't save you
because the Boogeyman is real
No use jumping under the covers and counting to ten
as you wait for the hand to rise up and pull you under the bed
The bed is no longer a raft adrift at sea
There is no current
There is no rescue party
Just me
And I'm here to tell you that the grown-ups have lied
They'll tell you
"Sticks and stones may break your bones but words will never hurt you"
but they won't tell you that the Boogeyman is real
He'll come to your room with words
"Nothing" and
"******" and
"******" and
"******"
sharpened like arrows in his quiver
He'll stretch the bow of upper and lower lip
and take aim at your Achilles Heel
because he knows how your mother held you as she baptized you in hope
"****" doesn't bruise your arm
or push you down the stairs
or tangle its fingers in your scalp and yank your hair
but it'll slump your shoulders
make a mumble out of your laughter
"Freak" never gave anyone a black eye
but it's hung bodies from the rafters
The grown-ups don't want you to know that the Boogeyman is real
because they're the ones who invented the weapons he wields
They don't want you to know that you're defenseless
if all you've got is a cold-shoulder shield
They don't want to have to tell you that you might have to yield
to a monster they created
You are both so much like me
I can't watch them feed you half-truths and sit here passively
You deserve to know what it is that will haunt you
What it is that haunts me
My bed is not safe either
I still check my closets for words I have suppressed
The grown-ups check theirs too but they're protecting you
They just hide it best
See, you and I
We bleed crayola
because we haven't forgotten what it's like to be a kid
We remember popsicles in summertime
and all the naughty things we did
We remember how to cheat at hide-and-seek
and all the corners in which we hid
I know
that there will be days when the Boogeyman will call you
Nothing
Just remind him that
Nothing is Something
that Something could be Anything
and therefore
you are important.
Smile in his face
and pretend you cannot hear, cannot understand, cannot be hurt
When the arrows take to the air
walk so far away and don't stop until your toes are dangling over the edge of the ocean
and all that lies beneath you is a tunnel of stars
When he finds your Achilles Heel,
tell someone
No use dying in battle
Forgive the grown-ups, for they know not their mistakes
Show them how to handle it
Sleep with the light on
Check your closet
Be prepared
He will come
but if you know your enemy
there's no way you can lose

I'm disowning my name.
In America, my name is cumbersome
and clumsy
and confusing
so I'm leaving it behind.
See,
my name starts with an S and ends with a Z
and one's a mirror of the other
so they're like bookends
for a collection of letters
that spell a name
that I never really felt belonged to me.
Every morning, when I wake up,
I wriggle into my name
but it doesn't feel quite right.
It's like borrowing your best friend's jeans
even though she's tall and skinny
and you've got a hundred generations of Puertoriqueña swirling around the blood in your hips.
I don't like my name
cause it doesn't diffuse across your lips.
It bursts through your teeth.
It's got a weight on your tongue
that brings down the sound with the weight of
a thousand sinking ships.
I've got a
Hispanic Titanic of a name
but my skin's so white
it seems impolite to claim an ethnicity
that only lends its elasticity
because of my father
and the people that brought him here.
My name is not me.
It never was.
It is an anchor that keeps me on the island of what my family used to be.
I am not a race.
I am not a category next to a box on a sheet of paper.
I am the syncopated heartbeat of a tribal drum.
I am the ****** whisper of water on the sand.
I am the sunburn on the corrugated tin.
I am the hunger in the stomachs of the working poor.
So when I die
let me not be remembered by
fifteen letters I did not choose
seven syllables I did not select
three titles I did not ask for.
Let them tell stories of
what I did
where I went
what I saw
who I loved
the words I spoke
the thoughts I formulated,
ignorant of my race
free of bias and prejudice
and preconceived notions
of what I should have been
because in the end
none of this will matter
I'll have no strength for words
but with a penultimate breath
I'll still be able to smile.

Imagine this:
Me, who only speaks English
Me, who is moving to Japan
Me, with the Puerto Rican father and the Italian mother
being called a terrorist
for scrawling Arabic in the corners of my notebook.
"It's nothing personal," you say
"I'm just calling it like it is."
I sit in silence and wait for the teacher to stop this,
Say something, Say anything
Say No, Sofia would never hurt another soul
Her silence is a gag over my mouth
handcuffs on a chair
a knot in my belly plummeting out of control
If you had asked, I would gladly have shown you how to write your name
You start with the crooked smile of the letter "ba"
the calculated decrescendo of "ra"
"ya"'s sensual arc
I could show you how to write the guardian "alif"
or the embryonic "noon"
nestled safely inside of her calligrapher's womb
But somehow, between my pen and your eyes, the phrase

I miss you

written in near flawless script
turned into a threat resembling

someone is going to die

If you had asked, I would have told you of how I met an Arab
(you spell that: lam ba noon alif noon ya )
who loved music
(meem waw seen ya qaf alif-maqsura)
and Poptarts
(there's no P in Arabic)
and me.
Let me teach you how to write my name
so the next time you decide to throw around the word "terrorist"
you'll remember that those letters spell a name that represents
a living breathing person
and your prey whose name is spelled with the same alphabet as mine is
a living breathing person
Come here
Unclench your fists and take my pen
You are smart
I will teach you
Trace the shapes like me
and I will show you where you went wrong
be it in life or just now with these ancient ABCs
"Seen" is like a W except she's proud of her curves
and has a left hook that would make any man jealous
"Waw" is an air-headed guy whose body is an afterthought
with hair that billows in the wind and is never far behind
"Fa"
Treat it like a cobra
***** and proud
but dot it, mind you
That's the serpent's crown jewel
"Ya"
The singe-winged bird nesting on two tiny eggs
and "Ta marbuta"
There's no clever way to teach you ta
You just have to learn it
Now
use your two good eyes that are so good at judging and tell me that my name is not alive
The queen and the mother
The feminist and the prideful lover
And the misfit
I can be all of those
You will be all of those
Come here
There's enough space in my margin for you
Practice celebrating your secondary identity
now that you know I am not a terrorist
I won't hold a grudge because you misunderstood
I can't blame you
You just didn't know how to see

When I lie in bed
in that limbo between sleepy and sleeping
I think about throwing open all the windows on a hot summer night
(the kind where you can't breathe for the season's breath beating you senseless)
and dancing in your arms.
We'll both be tired and conservative with our words
but our feet will converse into the night.
I'm thinking Sidney Bechet's "Blue Horizon" should be a good place to start
so you have an idea of where I'm going.
I want the heat to press us together until we melt.
The end of your body will be the beginning of mine
because no one's paying attention to where lines are drawn.
If anyone's going to draw them, it'll be me
sliding the tip of my finger across your chest in time to the record
which is so slow we're almost standing still.
We don't notice though, because the only rhythm we care about is us.
The way I see it,
it's like Tennessee Williams is somewhere up there
hacking away at his typewriter
creating us with each stroke of the key.
His fingers work our literary strings and we sway like marionettes in the hands of our creator.
He places the screen door on the other side of the room
the ***** walls around us
the indifferent lightbulb hanging above our heads,
giving off just enough light so we don't have to squint
but not enough to make the room feel anything less than sensual.
Tennessee draped the sundress over my shoulders
but kindly left my feet bare so I could feel the floor in its imperfect softness.
He put a watch on your wrist
not so you'd keep time
but so you'd remember the person who gave it to you.
There's a hint of a smile stretched across the divan of your lips
though I know Tennessee had not a single thing to do with it.
It was all me.
And just before I fall asleep,
the song finishes
and Tennessee packs up his machine,
leaving us to ourselves for the rest of the dream before a dream.

Praying for a minute more
as I stare at my watch.
Maybe if I look harder,
I can hinder time.

1.
At night, with my hand behind my head,
its whispering metronome
lulls me to sleep,
continuous like the white noise of some undiscovered beach.

2.
In the apartment, as I pass by the stairs,
the bourdon note of the hour's routine chime
hides in the corner
like a child meeting a stranger for the first time,
clinging to its mother.

3.
In the classroom, on the wall,
it lingers like a ******.
Everywhere, I am followed
by its piercing gaze.

4.
In the room, on the bed stand,
assertive in the light of the rising sun,
as reliable as a royal guard.
Cold and unfeeling.
I am obligated to obey.

5.
In my body, behind the gilded cage of my ribs,
it tangos in step
with my pulsating heart.
Every second winds the battery down.
Tangible,
yet why can't I feel it?

6.
In the train station,
it keeps a record of our coming and going,
sees us float like specters across spotless tile.
How many wanderers will it see before it breaks?
Perhaps it is our guardian angel,
silently waiting for us to be late.

7.
On the sundial, in the crumbling heat of mid-afternoon,
it remains unreliable.
The sky makes its own hours.
With clouds come the pause of time.

Dear Twelve Year Old Me,
For God's sake.
Stop wearing those ******* butterfly pants.
And you wonder why no one wants to play tennis with you.
Dear Twelve Year Old Me,
If you think you hate math now,
wait til sophomore year.
That's when they stop giving you numbers altogether.
Dear Twelve Year Old Me,
I know you're crying in your bed
but it's OK
because the girl you kissed only gets prettier
and the ones you want to haven't come along yet.
Dear Twelve Year Old Me,
When you turn fifteen,
don't think twice about dressing like George Harrison
because dude was awesome and so are you.
Dear Fifteen Year Old Me,
I see you sneaking around the boy's half of Goodwill,
checking around corners to see if anyone's looking.
The night you held your hair hostage with scissors
and wondered how many inches you'd have to cut
until you felt valuable again,
I was the reflection in the mirror.
The nights you recited the first third of "Howl"
to comfort yourself
I was the quilt you pulled over your eyes.
Dear Twelve and Fifteen Year Old Me,
Stop punishing yourself for being something you didn't get to decide.
You're going to meet a girl in a coffee shop
with a whisper of a laugh
and a floppy woolen hat
who will make you realize
that love is when you want to say her name to everyone who passes you by
that love is when you search all the faces for hers
that love is when you decide danger in the open is more important than safety in a closet
that love is when you forgive yourself for something that was never bad to begin with.
Dear Twelve and Fifteen Year Old Me,
You're going to ***** things up
and miss opportunities
because that's what you did
but just know that seventeen year old you is trying to be fearless
so thank those who love you and forgive those who don't.
And really.
Enough with the pants.

It's been said that
I stain the desert red.
That with my pen
I killed them.

Just like that.

But I don't feel like a monster
when the flint of her fingertips
ignites the spark in my hand.
I watch her toes kiss the floor,
breathes and sighs,
closes her eyes
while I read silently.
Sometimes,
I laugh to relieve the burden
of my decisions.
So I turn on the television.
They're saying
I stain the desert red.

Just like that.

But I don't feel like a butcher
when the soles of their shoes
tap on the bowels on the aircraft.
I watch foreign oceans change shape beneath my
as if I am sitting inside a kaleidoscope.
Over the din of my doubt
I hear them laugh and swear and jab
about their lives
their boring wives
while I sit pensively.
Sometimes, I drink to absolve the burden
of my fears.
So I cradle my vices,
suckle them,
let their fiery liquor caress my soft palate.
Somewhere,
I can hear the radio.
It says I stain the desert red.
That with my hand,
I killed them.

Just like that.

But I don't feel like a murderer
when I am being lifted onto the shoulders
of quiet, hungry adversaries.
Feet scuffling,
papers shuffling.
Sometimes ,
I sigh to relieve the burden of my duty,
if only momentarily
until I am reawakened
by the cooing mantra
that lingers like an aftertaste.
It purrs to me.
It is the voice of my daughters
and it is not about how
I stain the desert red
but how I painted their world with
color.


-for George W. Bush

Here's how you know if religion is right for you.
Put your faith in your hands.
If it weighs them down, leave it at your feet.
If your hands stay still, put it back in your heart and let it stew for a bit.
If your hands somehow rise above where they were before, put it in your pocket, because you're gonna need it where we're going.
For those with empty pockets and hearts,
keep your eyes open.
If something strikes your fancy along the way, tuck it in your jeans.
Eventually, you will make your own faith.
And if you feel that you need no faith or religion
then walk straight and steady
because we all need something to push us forward.

I want to know you
as intimately as the needle
that made you a mural.

Sitting in the asylum
voices of the infirmed
call to each other.
A young man hums to himself,
keys jangling.
They carry their preferences under their arms,
judging each other by the objects in their hands.
And here I sit,
in the atrium
listening to the mad men heeding the sirens that call to them.
They obey
and beat their rhythms upon ivory tables
bone-wracked as wooden bridges slip out of their grooves
horses and trees united
in the Sistine Chapel ceilings of the lunatic's mind
epiphany and entropy painted on the skull canvases
of bridled souls.
The floor shudders as a hundred feet tap their heartbeats
in different moments.
Seizures of enlightenment
are what brought them here,
and similarly,
what will keep them.
A sired calls from a locked room
and the ivory tables shatter.

It started at the end
when she walked away
Purple paint on his fingertips
His pockets full of clay

He's an artist
He thinks in strokes
She's a lover
She speaks in giggles and jokes

The sketchbooks form a pile
He's drunken all the wine
His hands are steady without hers holding them
He remembers how to draw in a straight line

If art comes from suffering
he's reached his prime
And since she's left him
He takes his time

The galleries are filled with her portraits
He memorized the contours of her face
Every sketch is an echo of her features
that he can't bring himself to erase
The paint is his tears and so he cries

It started two years in
At first they were just hints
The colors kept getting darker
Black was mixed with every tint

The slow distortion
The quiet craze
In the end she knew
this was no phase

For a while she ignored it
"I know we'll be alright"
People talked, she heard the whispers
In the end, she couldn't fight

It grew apparent
She was his muse
But he was rope soaked in kerosene
She saw the fuse

In the night she packed her bags
And stole a pen to prove her claim
While he worked inside his study
she disappeared into the rain
In the din of the storm she freely cried

We're painting the nursery walls over with white.
Does the color seem too bright?
Does it take in all the light?
It doesn't matter now.
The color's on the wall.
We'll paint the empty halls.
But what about the crib?

We're taking the clothes out of the closet and making a pile.
You know, it's been a long while
Since I've seen you smile.
Don't remind me.
My lips don't stretch these days.
Not in the familiar ways.
Such a time since you last laughed.

We're washing the sheets from our separate beds.
Keep the white ones from the reds.
Are you still taking your meds?
You don't get to ask those things,
not since you moved downstairs.
You know that I still care.
There's something in between us.

Our father
who might be in Heaven,
hollow is thy name.
Thy kingdom came.
Thy will was done
on Earth in the name of Heaven.
Give the poor their daily bread
and forgive us our faults
as we forgive those who have wronged us.
Lead us not into triviality
and deliver us from self-destruction.
Amen.

I find that
I love you more
when I am lonely.