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.