This poem is a second installment of my America series, two poems that respond directly to Allen Ginsberg's "America," and the violence against black and brown bodies due to systematic racism. Suenos, or America Part Three, addresses the personal--my own struggle to reconcile my identity as a latina woman with my white passing privilege. Suenos addresses racism against latinx peoples in America, as well as the cultural diaspora of sharing space with the colonizer and the colonized within my singular body.
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The Ecuadorian boy smiles at me on the stoop
He turns his angel head to say hello,
He is ashy in the knees and weak in the ankles
We share in our eyes the water that comes
From raw chiles and the warm film
Of the melted Ibarra, and the music
Of mijo o mija in the summer nights
With the patio lights glittering like stars
And the cigar smoke drifting up in clouds like
Cotton candy but with a different taste
We are like-faced, two ripples in the water
The same stone skimmed across the surface
Of impenetrable glass—
Or is it all a glimmer in my dreams?
Does he smile, and to himself think, she is one of them?
The white girls on the corner in front of Bergdorf Goodman’s
With their oversized bags and clucking boots
And their knowledge of fast cars, their smell of shampoo?
My heart sinks—thinks: Is this the end?
It falls from between my grasping fingers
Like sand through an hourglass
Tumbles into the cracks between the slabs
Of concrete on the sidewalk and down into
The Earth’s crust where girls with skin
The color of rust lay down, lay down
And with hazy voices call up to the busy bees
The humming presses in upon each
Contraction, she holds her skin tight between
Her palms, although they are rough-hewn and
Beaten down, her long red fingernails like
The talons of some stranger animal—unknown to you
Unknown to us all
The houses are sewn parallel
Into the cloth of the green moss and the
Watered grass and the lakes encased
In solid stone
No banks, no edges, just these black
Telephone wires that link our voices
Like pearls on a clear string
Bang, bang together, we clang our pots and pans
On the precipice of a New Year but with the old ways
Hanging heavy from our back pockets
In this same dream we cross Union Square
With our cold hands clasped tight
Fingers twisted like Cat’s Cradle
Pulled apart by the gentle pluck of two
White fingers pinching at our strings
I draw you into my arms, with a pencil
I color you into my clothes, with a crayon
We are a picture in a book about prosperity
We are the kind of wealth that cannot come
From checkbooks or credit cards or
Paper bonds we are atoms crushed together
Holding tight like water, stuck in the crevice of a flowerpot
She turns the wet dirt with her hand, plucks the dying leaves from
These roses that still bloom in East Harlem, red and gold
On the hazy days when the girls play double dutch before
The sirens pull them back into the doors of their grandmother’s
Yellow kitchen, with the kettle on the stove and the blanket
Across the shoulders and a cigarette that burns for an eternity
As it lays loose between her fingers and auntie plays at the dials
On the radio: another funeral, and only one black dress to wear
Black is the death of him, black is the death, black is dying
You look at the backs of your hands and wonder at God’s
Imperfect design—the futile devices, the blatant shadows
Cast into the future as you gaze into the clock’s face
Just before the CooKoo, Coo, Koo, Coo, Cooped
I would wrap you in my skirts, in the warmth of
A corn husk and bury you in the safety of
These dias felices, in the hot steam from my champurrado
Another menstrual ache, a bird shivers, wings released
Into the open fist, clasped, held down, quelled by the
Weight of some butcher’s hand, the final blow
At the butcher’s block and the blood that runs into
The drain and disappears into the water like little bits of glass
Washed up on a beach somewhere—a diamond in the rocks
America, are you burning? In my dreams the flames enveloped you
Like a gentle embrace, a lover unscorned or a mother to the breast
America, are you hungry? We feed you with gasoline, with broken chairs
From the schools where children write their names in cursive
In capital letters—the warmth is like Independence Day
America, America
I wake up in my bed and I see you
In the frosted glass of the mirror
You are wearing my face as a mask
The closet looks like monsters
I am afraid of the dark
America,
I am afraid.
