[1 of 5] The Poet X: A Novel by Elizabeth Acevedo (2018)

Author: Elizabeth Acevedo

Acevedo, Elizabeth. The Poet X, part 1 of 5. [S.l.]: HarperCollins, 2018.

Contents

Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Part I: In the Beginning Was the Word
Stoop-Sitting
Unhide-able
Mira, Muchacha
Names
The First Words
Mami Works
Confirmation Class
God
“Mami,” I Say to Her on the Walk Home
When You’re Born to Old Parents
When You’re Born to Old Parents, Continued
When You’re Born to Old Parents, Continued Again
The Last Word on Being Born to Old Parents
Rumor Has It,
First Confirmation Class
Father Sean
Haiku
Boys
Caridad and I Shouldn’t Be Friends
Questions I Have
Night before First Day of School
H.S.
Ms. Galiano
Rough Draft of Assignment 1—Write about the most impactful day of your life.
Final Draft of Assignment 1 (What I Actually Turn In)
The Routine
Altar Boy
Twin’s Name
More about Twin
It’s Only the First Week of Tenth Grade
How I Feel about Attention
Games
After
Okay?
On Sunday
During Communion
Church Mass
Not Even Close to Haikus
Holy Water
People Say
On Papi
All Over a Damn Wafer
The Flyer
After the Buzz Dies Down

Dedication

To Katherine Bolaños and my former students
at Buck Lodge Middle School 2010–2012,
and all the little sisters yearning to see themselves:
this is for you

Part I
In the Beginning
Was the Word

Friday, August 24

Stoop-Sitting

The summer is made for stoop-sitting
and since it’s the last week before school starts,
Harlem is opening its eyes to September.
I scope out this block I’ve always called home.
Watch the old church ladies, chancletas flapping
against the pavement, their mouths letting loose a train
of island Spanish as they spread he said, she said.
Peep Papote from down the block
as he opens the fire hydrant
so the little kids have a sprinkler to run through.
Listen to honking cabs with bachata blaring
from their open windows
compete with basketballs echoing from the Little Park.
Laugh at the viejos—my father not included—
finishing their dominoes tournament with hard slaps
and yells of “Capicu!”
Shake my head as even the drug dealers posted up
near the building smile more in the summer, their hard scowls
softening into glue-eyed stares in the direction
of the girls in summer dresses and short shorts:
“Ayo, Xiomara, you need to start wearing dresses like that!”
“Shit, you’d be wifed up before going back to school.”
“Especially knowing you church girls are all freaks.”
But I ignore their taunts, enjoy this last bit of freedom,
and wait for the long shadows to tell me
when Mami is almost home from work,
when it’s time to sneak upstairs.

Unhide-able

I am unhide-able.
Taller than even my father, with what Mami has always said
was “a little too much body for such a young girl.”
I am the baby fat that settled into D-cups and swinging hips
so that the boys who called me a whale in middle school
now ask me to send them pictures of myself in a thong.
The other girls call me conceited. Ho. Thot. Fast.
When your body takes up more room than your voice
you are always the target of well-aimed rumors,
which is why I let my knuckles talk for me.
Which is why I learned to shrug when my name was replaced by insults.
I’ve forced my skin just as thick as I am.

Mira, Muchacha

Is Mami’s favorite way to start a sentence
and I know I’ve already done something wrong
when she hits me with: “Look, girl. . . .”
This time it’s “Mira, muchacha, Marina from across the street
told me you were on the stoop again talking to los vendedores.”
Like usual, I bite my tongue and don’t correct her,
because I hadn’t been talking to the drug dealers;
they’d been talking to me. But she says she doesn’t
want any conversation between me and those boys,
or any boys at all, and she better not hear about me hanging out
like a wet shirt on a clothesline just waiting to be worn
or she would go ahead and be the one to wring my neck.
“Oíste?” she asks, but walks away before I can answer.
Sometimes I want to tell her, the only person in this house
who isn’t heard is me.

Names

I’m the only one in the family
without a biblical name.
Shit, Xiomara isn’t even Dominican.
I know, because I Googled it.
It means: One who is ready for war.
And truth be told, that description is about right
because I even tried to come into the world
in a fighting stance: feet first.
Had to be cut out of Mami
after she’d given birth
to my twin brother, Xavier, just fine.
And my name labors out of some people’s mouths
in that same awkward and painful way.
Until I have to slowly say:
See-oh-MAH-ruh.
I’ve learned not to flinch the first day of school
as teachers get stuck stupid trying to figure it out.
Mami says she thought it was a saint’s name.
Gave me this gift of battle and now curses
how well I live up to it.
My parents probably wanted a girl who would sit in the pews
wearing pretty florals and a soft smile.
They got combat boots and a mouth silent
until it’s sharp as an island machete.

The First Words

Pero, tú no eres fácil
is a phrase I’ve heard my whole life.
When I come home with my knuckles scraped up:
Pero, tú no eres fácil.
When I don’t wash the dishes quickly enough,
or when I forget to scrub the tub:
Pero, tú no eres fácil.
Sometimes it’s a good thing,
when I do well on an exam or the rare time I get an award:
Pero, tú no eres fácil.
When my mother’s pregnancy was difficult,
and it was all because of me,
because I was turned around
and they thought that I would die or worse,
that I would kill her,
so they held a prayer circle at church
and even Father Sean showed up at the emergency room,
Father Sean, who held my mother’s hand
as she labored me into the world,
and Papi paced behind the doctor,
who said this was the most difficult birth she’d been a part of
but instead of dying I came out wailing,
waving my tiny fists,
and the first thing Papi said,
the first words I ever heard,
“Pero, tú no eres fácil.”
You sure ain’t an easy one.

Mami Works

Cleaning an office building in Queens.
Rides two trains in the early morning
so she can arrive at the office by eight.
She works at sweeping, and mopping,
emptying trash bins, and being invisible.
Her hands never stop moving, she says.
Her fingers rubbing the material of plastic gloves
like the pages of her well-worn Bible.
Mami rides the train in the afternoon,
another hour and some change to get to Harlem.
She says she spends her time reading verses,
getting ready for the evening Mass,
and I know she ain’t lying, but if it were me
I’d prop my head against the metal train wall,
hold my purse tight in my lap, close my eyes
against the rocking, and try my best to dream.

Tuesday, August 28

Confirmation Class

Mami has wanted me to take the sacrament
of confirmation for three years now.
The first year, in eighth grade, the class got full
before we could sign up, and even with all her heavenly pull
Mami couldn’t get a spot for Twin and me.
Father Sean told her it’d be fine if we waited.
Last year, Caridad, my best friend, extended her trip in D.R.
right when we were supposed to begin the classes,
so I asked if I could wait another year.
Mami didn’t like it, but since she’s friends with Caridad’s mother
Twin went ahead and did the class without me.
This year, Mami has filled out the forms,
signed me up, and marched me to church
before I can tell her that Jesus feels like a friend
I’ve had my whole childhood
who has suddenly become brand-new;
who invites himself over too often, who texts me too much.
A friend I just don’t think I need anymore.
(I know, I know . . . even writing that is blasphemous.)
But I don’t know how to tell Mami that this year,
it’s not about feeling unready,
it’s about knowing that this doubt has already been confirmed.

God

“Mami,” I Say to Her on the Walk Home

The words sit in my belly,
and I use my nerves
like a pulley to lift
them out of my mouth.
“Mami, what if I don’t
do confirmation?
What if I waited a bit for—”
But she cuts me off,
her index finger a hard exclamation point
in front of my face.
“Mira, muchacha,”
she starts, “I will
feed and clothe no heathens.”
She tells me I owe it to
God and myself to devote.
She tells me this country is too soft
and gives kids too many choices.
She tells me if I don’t confirm here
she will send me to D.R.,
where the priests and nuns know
how to elicit true piety.
I look at her scarred knuckles.
I know exactly how she was taught
faith.

When You’re Born to Old Parents

Who’d given up hope for children
and then are suddenly gifted with twins,
you will be hailed a miracle.
An answered prayer.
A symbol of God’s love.
The neighbors will make the sign of the cross
when they see you,
thankful you were not a tumor
in your mother’s belly
like the whole barrio feared.

When You’re Born to Old Parents, Continued

Your father will never touch rum again.
He will stop hanging out at the bodega
where the old men go to flirt.
He will no longer play music
that inspires swishing or thrusting.
You will not grow up listening
to the slow pull of an accordion
or rake of the güira.
Your father will become “un hombre serio.”
Merengue might be your people’s music
but Papi will reject anything
that might sing him toward temptation.

When You’re Born to Old Parents, Continued Again

Your mother will engrave
your name on a bracelet,
the words Mi Hija on the other side.
This will be your favorite gift.
This will become a despised shackle.
Your mother will take to church
like a dove thrust into the sky.
She was faithful before, but now
she will go to Mass every single day.
You will be forced to go with her
until your knees learn the splinters of pews,
the mustiness of incense,
the way a priest’s robe tries to shush silent
all the echoing doubts
ringing in your heart.

The Last Word on Being Born to Old Parents

You will learn to hate it.
No one, not even your twin brother,
will understand the burden
you feel because of your birth;
your mother has sight for nothing
but you two and God;
your father seems to be serving
a penance, an oath of solitary silence.
Their gazes and words
are heavy with all the things
they want you to be.
It is ungrateful to feel like a burden.
It is ungrateful to resent my own birth.
I know that Twin and I are miracles.
Aren’t we reminded every single day?

Rumor Has It,

Mami was a comparona:
stuck-up, they said, head high in the air,
hair that flipped so hard
that shit was doing somersaults.
Mami was born en La Capital,
in a barrio of thirst buckets
who wrote odes to her legs,
but the only man Mami wanted
was nailed to a cross.
Since she was a little girl
Mami wanted to wear a habit,
wanted prayer and the closest
thing to an automatic heaven admission
she could get.
Rumor has it, Mami was forced to marry Papi;
nominated by her family
so she could travel to the States.
It was supposed to be a business deal,
but thirty years later, here they still are.
And I don’t think Mami’s ever forgiven Papi
for making her cheat on Jesus.
Or all the other things he did.

Tuesday, September 4

First Confirmation Class

And I already want to pop the other kids right in the face.
They stare at me like they don’t got the good sense—
or manners—I’m sure their moms gave them.
I clip my tongue between my teeth
and don’t say nothing, don’t curse them out.
But my back is stiff and I’m unable to shake them off.
And sure, Caridad and I are older
but we know most of the kids from around the way,
or from last year’s youth Bible study.
So I don’t know why they seem so surprised to see us here.
Maybe they thought we’d already been confirmed,
with the way our mothers are always up in the church.
Maybe because I can’t keep the billboard frown off my face,
the one that announces I’d rather be anywhere but here.

Father Sean

Leads the confirmation class.
He’s been the head priest at La Consagrada Iglesia
as long as I been alive,
which means he’s been around forever.
Last year, during youth Bible study, he wasn’t so strict.
He talked to us in his soft West Indian accent,
coaxing us toward the light.
Or maybe I just didn’t notice his strictness
because the older kids were always telling jokes,
or asking the important questions
we really wanted to know the answers to:
“Why should we wait for marriage?”
“What if we want to smoke weed?”
“Is masturbation a sin?”
But confirmation class is different.
Father Sean tells us we’re going to deepen
our relationship with God.
“Of your own volition you will accept him into your lives.
You will be sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit.
And this is a serious matter.”
That whole first class,
I touch my tongue to the word volition,
like it’s a fruit I’ve never tasted
that’s already gone sour in my mouth.

Haiku

Father Sean lectures
I wait for a good moment
whispering to C:

Boys

X: You make out with any boys while you were in D.R.?
C: Girl, stop. Always talking about some boys.
X: Well if you didn’t kiss nobody, why you all red in the face?
C: Xiomara, you know I didn’t kiss no boy. Just like I know you didn’t.
X: Don’t look at me like that. I’m not proud of the fact that I still ain’t kiss nobody. It’s a damn shame, we’re almost sixteen.
C: Don’t say damn, Xiomara. And don’t roll your eyes at me either. You won’t even be sixteen until January.
X: I’m just saying, I’m ready to stop being a nun. Kiss a boy, shoot, I’m ready to creep with him behind a stairwell and let him feel me up.
C: Oh God, girl. I really just can’t with you. Here, here’s the Book of Ruth. Learn yourself some virtue.
X: Tsk, tsk. You gonna talk about this in a church, then take his name in vain. Ouch!
C: Keep talking mess. I’m going to do more than pinch you. I don’t know why I missed you.
X: Maybe because I make you laugh more than your stuffy-ass church mission friends?
C: I can’t with you. Now, stop worrying about kissing and boys. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.

Caridad and I Shouldn’t Be Friends

We are not two sides of the same coin.
We are not ever mistaken for sisters.
We don’t look alike, don’t sound alike.
We don’t make no damn sense as friends.
I curse up a storm and am always ready to knuckle up.
Caridad recites Bible verses and promotes peace.
I’m ready to finally feel what it’s like to like a boy.
Caridad wants to wait for marriage.
I’m afraid of my mother so I listen to what she says.
Caridad genuinely respects her parents.
I should hate Caridad. She’s all my parents want in a daughter.
She’s everything I could never be.
But Caridad, Twin, and I have known each other since diapers.
We celebrate birthdays together, attended Bible
camp sleepovers with each other, spend Christmas Eve
at each other’s houses.
She knows me in ways I don’t have to explain.
Can see one of my tantrums coming a mile off,
knows when I need her to joke, or when I need to fume,
or when I need to be told about myself.
Mostly, Caridad isn’t all extra goody-goody in her judgment.
She knows all about the questions I have,
about church, and boys, and Mami.
But she don’t ever tell me I’m wrong.
She just gives me one of her looks,
full of so much charity, and tells me that she knows
I’ll figure it all out.

Questions I Have

Without Mami’s Rikers Island Prison–like rules,
I don’t know who I would be
when it comes to boys.
It’s so complicated.
For a while now I’ve been having all these feelings.
Noticing boys more than I used to.
And I get all this attention from guys
but it’s like a sancocho of emotions.
This stew of mixed-up ingredients:
partly flattered they think I’m attractive,
partly scared they’re only interested in my ass and boobs,
and a good measure of Mami-will-kill-me fear sprinkled on top.
What if I like a boy too much and become addicted to sex
like Iliana from Amsterdam Ave.?
Three kids, no daddy around,
and baby bibs instead of a diploma hanging on her wall.
What if I like a boy too much and he breaks my heart,
and I wind up angry and bitter like Mami,
walking around always exclaiming how men ain’t shit,
even when my father and brother are in the same room?
What if I like a boy too much
and none of those things happen . . .
they’re the only scales I have.
How does a girl like me figure out the weight
of what it means to love a boy?

Wednesday, September 5

Night before First Day of School

As I lie in bed,
thinking of this new school year,
I feel myself
stretching my skin apart.
Even with my Amazon frame,
I feel too small for all that’s inside me.
I want to break myself open
like an egg smacked hard against an edge.
Teachers always say
that each school year is a new start:
but even before this day
I think I’ve been beginning.

Thursday, September 6

H.S.

My high school is one of those old-school structures
from the Great Depression days, or something.
Kids come from all five boroughs, and most of us bus or train,
although since it’s my zone school, I can walk to it on a nice day.
Chisholm H.S. sits wide and squat, taking up half a block,
redbrick and fenced-in courtyard with ball hoops and benches.
It’s not like Twin’s fancy genius school: glass, and futuristic.
This is the typical hood school, and not too long ago
it was considered one of the worst in the city:
gang fights in the morning and drug deals in the classroom.
It’s not like that anymore, but one thing I know for sure
is that reputations last longer than the time it takes to make them.
So I walk through metal detectors, and turn my pockets out,
and greet security guards by name, and am one of hundreds
who every day are sifted like flour through the doors.
And I keep my head down, and I cause no waves.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, this place is a place,
neither safe nor unsafe, just a means, just a way to get closer
to escape.

Ms. Galiano

Is not what I expected.
Everyone talks about her
like she’s super strict
and always assigning
the toughest homework.
So I expected someone older,
a buttoned-up, floppy-haired,
suit-wearing teacher,
with glasses sliding down her nose.
Ms. Galiano is young, has on bright colors,
and wears her hair naturally curly.
She’s also little—like, for real petite—
but carries herself big, know what I mean?
Like she’s used to shouldering her way
through any assumptions made about her.
Today, I have her first-period English,
and after an hour and fifteen minutes of icebreakers,
where we learn one another’s names
(Ms. Galiano pronounces mine right on the first try),
she gives us our first assignment:
“Write about the most impactful day of your life.”
And although it’s the first week of school,
and teachers always fake the funk the first week,
I have a feeling Ms. Galiano
actually wants to know my answer.

Rough Draft of Assignment 1—Write about the most impactful day of your life.

The day my period came, in fifth grade, was just that,
the ending of a childhood sentence.
The next phrase starting in all CAPS.
No one had explained what to do.
I’d heard older girls talk about “that time of the month”
but never what someone was supposed to use.
Mami was still at work when I got home from school and went
to pee, only to see my panties smudged in blood. I pushed Twin off
the computer and Googled “Blood down there.”
Then I snuck money from where Mami hides it beneath the pans,
bought tampons that I shoved into my body
the way I’d seen Father Sean cork the sacramental wine.
It was almost summer. I was wearing shorts.
I put the tampon in wrong. It only stuck up halfway
and the blood smeared between my thighs.
When Mami came home I was crying.
I pointed at the instructions;
Mami put her hand out but didn’t take them.
Instead she backhanded me so quick she cut open my lip.
“Good girls don’t wear tampones.
Are you still a virgin? Are you having relations?”
I didn’t know how to answer her, I could only cry.
She shook her head and told me to skip church that day.
Threw away the box of tampons, saying they were for cueros.
That she would buy me pads. Said eleven was too young.
That she would pray on my behalf.
I didn’t understand what she was saying.
But I stopped crying. I licked at my split lip.
I prayed for the bleeding to stop.

Final Draft of Assignment 1 (What I Actually Turn In)

Xiomara Batista
Friday, September 7
Ms. Galiano
The Most Impactful Day of My Life, Final Draft

When I turned twelve my twin brother saved up enough lunch money to get me something fancy: a notebook for our birthday. (I got him some steel knuckles so he could defend himself, but he used them to conduct electricity for a science project instead. My brother’s a genius.)

The notebook wasn’t the regular marble kind most kids use. He bought it from the bookstore. The cover is made of leather, with a woman reaching to the sky etched on the outside, and a bunch of motivational quotes scattered like flower petals throughout the pages. My brother says I don’t talk enough so he hoped this notebook would give me a place to put my thoughts. Every now and then, I dress my thoughts in the clothing of a poem. Try to figure out if my world changes once I set down these words.

This was the first time someone gave me a place to collect my thoughts. In some ways, it seemed like he was saying that my thoughts were important. From that day forward I’ve written every single day. Sometimes it seems like writing is the only way I keep from hurting.

The Routine

Is the same every school year:
I go straight home after school
and since Mami says that I’m “la niña de la casa,”
it’s my job to help her out around the house.
So after school I eat an apple—my favorite snack—
wash dishes, and sweep.
Dust around Mami’s altar to La Virgen María
and avoid Papi’s TV if he’s home
because he hates when I clean in front of it
while he’s trying to watch las noticias or a Red Sox game.
It’s one of the few things Twin and I argue about,
how he never has to do half the cleaning shit I do
but is still better liked by Mami.
He helps me when he’s home, folds the laundry
or scrubs the tub. But he won’t get in trouble if he doesn’t.
I hear one of Mami’s famous sayings in my ear,
“Mira, muchacha, life ain’t fair,
that’s why we have to earn our entrance into heaven.”

Altar Boy

Twin is easier for Mami to understand. He likes church.
As much of a science geek as he is,
he doesn’t question the Bible the way that I do.
He’s been an altar boy since he was eight,
could quote the New Testament—in Spanish and English—
since he was ten, leads discussions at Bible study
even better than the priest. (No disrespect to Father Sean.)
He even volunteered at the Bible camp this summer
and now that school’s started he’ll miss
the Stations of the Cross dioramas his campers made
from Popsicle sticks, the stick figure drawings
of Mary in the manger, the mosaic made of marbles
that he hung in the window of our room,
the one that I threw out this afternoon while I was cleaning,
watched it fall between the fire escape grates. For a second,
it caught the sun in a hundred colors
until it smashed against the street.
I’ll apologize to Twin later. Say it was an accident.
He’ll forgive me. He’ll pretend to believe me.

Twin’s Name

For as long as I can remember
I’ve only ever called my brother “Twin.”
He actually is named after a saint,
but I’ve never liked to say his name.
It’s a nice name, or whatever,
even starts with an X like mine,
but it just doesn’t feel like the brother I know.
His real name is for Mami, teachers, Father Sean.
But Twin? Only I can call him that,
a reminder of the pair we’ll always be.

More about Twin

Although Twin is older by almost an hour—
of course the birth got complicated when it was my turn—
he doesn’t act older. He is years softer than I will ever be.
When we were little, I would come home
with bleeding knuckles and Mami would gasp
and shake me: “¡Muchacha, siempre peleando!
Why can’t you be a lady? Or like your brother?
He never fights. This is not God’s way.”
And Twin’s eyes would meet mine
across the room. I never told her
he didn’t fight because my hands
became fists for him. My hands learned
how to bleed when other kids
tried to make him into a wound.
My brother was birthed a soft whistle:
quiet, barely stirring the air, a gentle sound.
But I was born all the hurricane he needed
to lift—and drop—those that hurt him to the ground.

Tuesday, September 11

It’s Only the First Week of Tenth Grade

And high school is already a damn mess.
In ninth grade you are in between.
No longer in junior high,
but still treated like a kid.
In ninth grade you are always frozen
between trying not to smile or cry,
until you learn that no one cares about
what your face does, only what your hands’ll do.
I thought tenth grade would be different
but I still feel like a lone shrimp
in a stream where too many are searching
for someone with a soft shell
to peel apart and crush.
Today, I already had to curse a guy out
for pulling on my bra strap,
then shoved a senior into a locker
for trying to whisper into my ear.
“Big body joint,” they say,
“we know what girls like you want.”
And I’m disgusted at myself
for the slight excitement
that shivers up my back
at the same time that I wish
my body could fold into the tiniest corner
for me to hide in.

How I Feel about Attention

If Medusa was Dominican
and had a daughter, I think I’d be her.
I look and feel like a myth.
A story distorted, waiting for others to stop
and stare.
Tight curls that spring like fireworks
out of my scalp. A full mouth pressed hard
like a razor’s edge. Lashes that are too long
so they make me almost pretty.
If Medusa
was Dominican and had a daughter, she might
wonder at this curse. At how her blood
is always becoming some fake hero’s mission.
Something to be slayed, conquered.
If I was her kid, Medusa would tell me her secrets:
how it is that her looks stop men
in their tracks why they still keep on coming.
How she outmaneuvers them when they do.

Saturday, September 15

Games

With one of our last warm-weather Saturdays
Twin, Caridad, and I go to the Goat Park
on the Upper West Side.
Outside of ice-skating when we were little,
neither Twin nor I are particularly athletic,
but Caridad loves “trying new social activities”
and this week it’s a basketball tournament.
The three of us have always been tight like this.
And although we’re different,
since we were little we’ve just clicked.
Sometimes Twin and Caridad are the ones
who act more like twins,
but our whole lives we’ve been friends, we’ve been family.
Already we feel the chill that’s biting at the edge of the air.
It will be hoodie weather soon,
and then North Face weather after that,
but today it’s still warm enough for only T-shirts,
and I’m kind of glad for it because the half-naked ball players? They’re FINE.
Running around in ball shorts, and no tees,
their muscles sweaty, their skin flushed.
I lean against the fence and watch them
race up and down the court.
Caridad is paying attention to the ball movement,
but Twin’s staring as hard as I am at one of the ballers.
When he catches me looking Twin pretends to clean his glasses on his shirt.
When the game is over (the Dyckman team won),
we shuffle away with the crowd,
but just as we get to the gate one of the ball players,
a young dude about our age, stops in front of me.
“Saw you looking at me kind of hard, Mami.”
Damn it. Recently, I haven’t been able to stop looking.
At the drug dealers, the ball players, random guys on the train.
But although I like to look, I hate to be seen.
All of a sudden I’m aware of how many boys
on the ball court have stopped to stare at me.
I shake my head at the baller and shrug.
Twin grabs my arms and begins pulling me away.
The baller steps to Twin.
“Oh, is this your girl? That’s a lot of body
for someone as small as you to handle.
I think she needs a man a little bigger.”
When I see his smirk, and his hand cupping his crotch,
I break from Twin’s grip, ignore Caridad’s intake of breath,
and take a step until I’m right in homeboy’s face:
“Homie, what makes you think you can ‘handle’ me,
when you couldn’t even handle the ball?”
I suck my teeth as the smile drops off his face;
the dudes around us start hooting and hollering in laughter.
I keep my chin up high and shoulder my way through the crowd.

After

It happens when I’m at bodegas.
It happens when I’m at school.
It happens when I’m on the train.
It happens when I’m standing on the platform.
It happens when I’m sitting on the stoop.
It happens when I’m turning the corner.
It happens when I forget to be on guard.
It happens all the time.

I should be used to it.
I shouldn’t get so angry
when boys—and sometimes
grown-ass men—
talk to me however they want,
think they can grab themselves
or rub against me
or make all kinds of offers.
But I’m never used to it.
And it always makes my hands shake.
Always makes my throat tight.
The only thing that calms me down
after Twin and I get home
is to put my headphones on.
To listen to Drake.
To grab my notebook,
and write, and write, and write
all the things I wish I could have said.
Make poems from the sharp feelings inside,
that feel like they could
carve me wide
open.

It happens when I wear shorts.
It happens when I wear jeans.
It happens when I stare at the ground.
It happens when I stare ahead.
It happens when I’m walking.
It happens when I’m sitting.
It happens when I’m on my phone.
It simply never stops.

Okay?

Twin asks me if I’m okay.
And my arms don’t know
which one they want to become:
a beckoning hug or falling anvils.
And Twin must see it on my face.
This love and distaste I feel for him.
He’s older (by a whole fifty minutes)
and a guy, but never defends me.
Doesn’t he know how tired I am?
How much I hate to have to be so
sharp tongued and heavy-handed?
He turns back to the computer
and quietly clicks away.
And neither of us has to say
we are disappointed in the other.\

Sunday, September 16

On Sunday

I stare at the pillar
in front of my pew
so I don’t have to look
at the mosaic of saints,
or the six-foot sculpture
of Jesus rising up from behind
the priest’s altar.
Even with the tambourine
and festive singing,
these days, church seems
less party and more prison.

During Communion

Ever since I was ten,
I’ve always stood with the other parishioners
at the end of Mass to receive the bread and wine.
But today, when everybody thrusts up from their seats
and faces Father Sean, my ass feels bolted to the pew.
Caridad slides past, her right brow raised in question,
and walks to the front of the line.
Mami elbows me sharply and I can feel
her eyes like bright lampposts shining on my face,
but I stare straight ahead, letting the stained glass
of la Madre María blur into a rainbow of colors.
Mami leans down: “Mira, muchacha, go take God.
Thank him for the fact that you’re breathing.”
She has a way of guilting me compliant.
Usually it works.
But today, I feel the question
sticking to the roof of my mouth like a wafer:
what’s the point of God giving me life
if I can’t live it as my own?
Why does listening to his commandments
mean I need to shut down my own voice?

Church Mass

When I was little,
I loved Mass.
The clanging tambourines
and guitar.
The church ladies
singing hymns
to merengue rhythms.
Everyone in the pews
holding hands and clapping.
My mother, tough at home,
would cry and smile
during Father Sean’s
mangled Spanish sermons.
It’s just when Father Sean
starts talking about the Scriptures
that everything inside me
feels like a too-full,
too-dirty kitchen sink.
When I’m told girls
Shouldn’t. Shouldn’t. Shouldn’t.
When I’m told
To wait. To stop. To obey.
When I’m told not to be like
Delilah. Lot’s Wife. Eve.
When the only girl I’m supposed to be
was an impregnated virgin
who was probably scared shitless.
When I’m told fear and fire
are all this life will hold for me.
When I look around the church
and none of the depictions of angels
or Jesus or Mary, not one of the disciples
look like me: morenita and big and angry.
When I’m told to have faith
in the father the son
in men and men are the first ones
to make me feel so small.
That’s when I feel like a fake.
Because I nod, and clap, and “Amén” and “Aleluya,”
all the while feeling like this house his house
is no longer one I want to rent.

Not Even Close to Haikus

Mami’s back is a coat hanger.
Her anger made of the heaviest wool.
It must keep her so hot.
*
“Mira, muchacha,
when it’s time to take the body of Christ,
don’t you ever opt out again.”
*
But I can hold my back like a coat hanger, too.
Straight and stiff and unbending
beneath the weight of her hard glare.
*
“I don’t want to take
the bread and wine, and Father Sean says
it should always and only be done with joy.”
*
Mami gives me a hard look.
I stare straight ahead.
It’s difficult to say who’s won this round.

Holy Water

“I just don’t know about that girl,”
Mami loud-whispers to Papi.
They never think that Twin and I can hear.
But since they barely say two words
to each other unless it’s about us or dinner,
we’re always listening when they speak
and these flimsy Harlem walls
barely muffle any sound.
“Recently, she’s got all kinds of devils inside of her.
They probably come from you.
I’ve talked to Padre Sean and he said
he’ll talk to her at confirmation class.”
And I want to tell Mami:
Father Sean talking to me won’t help.
That incense makes bow tie pasta of my belly.
That all the lit candles beckon like fingers
that want to clutch around my throat.
That I don’t understand her God anymore.
I hear Papi shushing her quiet.
“It’s that age. Teenage girls are overexcited.
Puberty changes their mind. Son locas.”
And since Papi knows more
about girls than she does
she stays silent at his reply.
I don’t know if it’s prayer to hope
that soon my feelings will drown me faster
than the church’s baptismal water.

People Say

Papi was a mujeriego.
That he would get drunk at the barbershop
and touch the thigh of any woman
who walked too close.
They say his tongue was slick
with compliments and his body
was like a tambor with the skin
stretched too tight.
They say Papi was broken,
that he couldn’t get women pregnant,
so he tossed his seeds to the wind,
not caring where they landed.
They say Twin and I saved him.
That if it wasn’t for us
Mami would have kicked him to tomorrow
or a jealous husband would have shanked him dead.
They say Papi used to love to dance
but now he finally has a spine
that allows him to stand straight.
They say we made it so.

On Papi

You can have a father who lives with you.
Who every day eats at the table
and watches TV in the living room
and snores through the whole night
and grunts about the bills, or the weather,
or your brother’s straight As.
You can have a father who works for Transit Authority,
and reads El Listín Diario,
and calls back to the island every couple of months
to speak to Primo So-and-So.
You can have a father who, if people asked,
you had to say lived with you.
You have to say is around.
But even as he brushes by you
on the way to the bathroom
he could be gone as anybody.
Just because your father’s present
doesn’t mean he isn’t absent.

All Over a Damn Wafer

As repentance for not participating in communion last time,
Mami makes me go
to evening Mass with her every evening this week,
even the days that aren’t confirmation class.
When Communion time comes
I stand in line with everyone else
and when Father Sean places the Eucharist
onto my tongue I walk away,
kneel in my pew,
and spit the wafer into my palm
when I’m pretending to pray.
I can feel the hot eyes of the Jesus statue
watching me hide the wafer beneath the bench,
where his holy body will now feed the mice.

Monday, September 17

The Flyer

“Calling all poets!”
The poster is printed
on regular white computer paper.
The bare basics:
Spoken Word Poetry Club
Calling all poets, rappers, and writers.
Tuesdays. After school.
See Ms. Galiano in room 302 for details.
It’s layered behind other more colorful
and bigger-lettered announcements
but it still makes me stop
halfway down the staircase,
as kids late to class
try their best to accidentally
make me topple down the stairs.
But I’m rooted to the spot,
a new awareness buzzing over the noise.
This poster feels personal,
like an engraved invitation
mailed directly to me.

After the Buzz Dies Down

I crumple the flyer in my backpack.
Balled and zipped up tight.
Tuesdays I have confirmation class.
Not a chance Mami’s gonna let me out of that.
Not a chance I want anyone hearing my work.
Something in my chest flutters like a bird
whose wings are being gripped still
by the firmest fingers

DMU Timestamp: October 05, 2023 23:32