Las Palmas, In a House No Longer There
the central strategy of the system is the colonization of desire.
— Sylvia Wynter
*
dis appearing island I stole my babies
replanted them
in me
to garner this body without chains wild
where some new something is where some
new venue is I kept fortresses in angles in
bodyclocks in midafternoonsky horizontal
where I dreamt
of you “Que Dios te bendiga”
*
evicted myself
who I was grew thick
dissolving boundary’s
strata & all alarm
indigo’s treatise taught me
how to insist a body as a home
of being
*
I who I is in pass
ing swept granule of
sugarcane & mango
the dream you held
“first holy communion”
the dresses inside
is whitening
one for your four
blessings abuela, you who were once
daughter un nationed
walked with at all hours of
skyward afterlife of
edges pressed & laced
in transit
*
on stairs I recompense notknowing
you in what language do I say
pretend? in what language do I say wherewerewe
& whoare Imean howareyou
here mami? tía y tíos y
how many arrivals of errant eyes
& wombs if origin
then water were the tears
of my birth
*
opaquely gleaned the wash to story a mirroring
“I’d like to return her whole this way”
however un done the scream
or bloodied ex
pel de lay de
tour the child dis comfited you who were once blond
& made to be your person whittled into
a tiny box
avowed & ripped from island light
land not land but whisper
*
continent they dangled from
you saw your body whither
tipped in brine & root crop
the 1980s were lavish cruel
junta death old colony
sky fugitive ocean fugitive
the moon in place as place
mythed her mother’s milk
into origins lost at church
Sunday’s school of arrows
we who were englished in
grammars & metaphors hija
willed her gift dis islanded r
ipped root torn continuums
was breach was covenant un
wieldy in their fray the news
coveredup as woman as child
as daughter was gash of light
was broken limb was mother
love planted in silence
para mi madre, mi tía, mis hermanas, y mi abuela
Shores of Appearance’s Gown
after for with Wangechi Mutu
1
etched breach
beyond dis cord
antic gown
thousand times
liquid
2
bird-skein penumbra
wings stretched
riveringly like limbs
in flux
3
sharp etymology
ruin’s mirage
I carry phenomena inside
the opening
4
in scissor in split-
infinitive places
beneath resemblance
breathe
5
break shores of histories
of others beside where
we once were
had coiled us
6
we who were un named
un made spoken of
drawn into adrift
solar weave
7
edgeless dimensions
un tether trope leap fray
lathed sleek sumptuous
vessels
8
I’d clay to common gods, she says
I’d ripple the courtyard
landmass omen Orisha ritual
we braid & scale
9
fortune to basket of bone
viewer hillside
I’d painted an eye in the place
of your being
10
where tendencies brush
womb patinaed torso a ligament
a ligature where planets kiss suture
plentitude’s if
