The Poet X Read online

  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

  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

  Aman

  Whispering with Caridad Later That Day

  What Twin Be Knowing

  Sharing

  Questions for Ms. Galiano

  Spoken Word

  Wait—

  Holding a Poem in the Body

  J. Cole vs. Kendrick Lamar

  Asylum

  What I Tell Aman:

  Dreaming of Him Tonight

  The Thing about Dreams

  Date

  Mami’s Dating Rules

  Clarification on Dating Rules

  Feeling Myself

  Part II: And the Word Was Made Flesh

  Smoke Parks

  I Decided a Long Time Ago

  Why Twin Is a Terrible Twin

  Why Twin Is a Terrible Twin, for Real

  Why Twin Is a Terrible Twin (Last and Most Important Reason)

  But Why Twin Is Still the Only Boy I’ll Ever Love

  Communication

  About A

  Catching Feelings

  Notes with Aman

  What I Didn’t Say to Caridad in Confirmation Class

  Lectures

  Ms. Galiano’s Sticky Note on Top of Assignment 1

  Sometimes Someone Says Something

  Listening

  Mother Business

  And Then He Does

  Warmth

  The Next Couple of Weeks

  Eve,

  “I Think the Story of Genesis Is Mad Stupid”

  As We Are Packing to Leave

  Father Sean

  Answers

  Rough Draft Assignment 2—Last paragraphs of My Biography

  Final Draft of Assignment 2 (What I Actually Turn In)

  Hands

  Fingers

  Talking Church

  Swoon

  Telephone

  Over Breakfast

  Angry Cat, Happy X

  About Being in Like

  Music

  Ring the Alarm

  The Day

  Wants

  At My Train Stop

  What I Don’t Tell Aman

  Kiss Stamps

  The Last Fifteen-Year-Old

  Concerns

  What Twin Knows

  Hanging Over My Head

  Friday

  Black & Blue

  Tight

  Excuses

  Costume Ready

  Reuben’s House Party

  One Dance

  Stoop-Sitting . . . with Aman

  Convos with Caridad

  Braiding

  Fights

  Scrapping

  What We Don’t Say

  Gay

  Feeling Off When Twin Is Mad

  Rough Draft of Assignment 3—Describe someone you consider misunderstood by society.

  Final Draft of Assignment 3 (What I Actually Turn In)

  Announcements

  Ice-Skating

  Until

  Love

  Around and Around We Go

  After Skating

  This Body on Fire

  The Shit & the Fan

  Miracles

  Fear

  Ants

  I Am No Ant

  Diplomas

  Cuero

  Mami Says,

  Repetition

  Things You Think While You’re Kneeling on Rice That Have Nothing to Do with Repentance:

  Another Thing You Think While You’re Kneeling on Rice That Has Nothing to Do with Repentance:

  The Last Thing You Think While You’re Kneeling on Rice That Has Nothing to Do with Repentance:

  Leaving

  What Do You Need from Me?

  Consequences

  Late That Night

  In Front of My Locker

  Part III: The Voice of One Crying in the Wilderness

  Silent World

  Heavy

  My Confession

  Father Sean Says,

  Prayers

  How I Can Tell

  Before We Walk in the House

  My Heart Is a Hand

  A Poem Mami Will Never Read

  In Translation

  Heartbreak

  Reminders

  Writing

  What I’d Like to Tell Aman When He Sends Another Apology Message:

  Favors

  Pulled Back

  On Thanksgiving

  Haiku: The Best Part About Thanksgiving Was When Mami:

  Rough Draft of Assignment 4—When was the last time you felt free?

  Rough Draft of Assignment 4—When was the last time you felt free?

  Rough Draft of Assignment 4—When was the last time you felt free?

  Final Draft of Assignment 4 (What I Actually Turn In)

  Gone

  Zeros

  Possibilities

  Can’t Tell Me Nothing

  Isabelle

  First Poetry Club Meeting

  Nerves

  When I’m Done

  Compliments

  Caridad Is Standing Outside the Church

  Hope Is a Thing with Wings

  Here

  Haikus

  Offering

  Holding Twin

  Cody

  Problems

  Dominican Spanish Lesson:

  Permission

  Open Mic Night

  Signed Up

  The Mic Is Open

  Invitation

  All the Way Hype

  At Lunch on Monday

  At Poetry Club

  Every Day after English Class

  Christmas Eve

  It’s a Rosary

  Longest Week

  The Waiting Game

  Birthdays

  The Good

  The Bad

  The Ugly

  Let Me Explain

  If Your Hand Causes You to Sin

  Verses

/>   Burn

  Where There Is Smoke

  Things You Think About in the Split Second Your Notebook Is Burning

  Other Things You Think About in the Split Second Your Notebook Is Burning

  My Mother Tries to Grab Me

  Returning

  On the Walk to the Train

  The Ride

  No Turning Back

  Taking Care

  In Aman’s Arms

  And I Also Know

  Tangled

  The Next Move

  There Are Words

  Facing It

  “You Don’t Have to Do Anything You Don’t Want to Do.”

  What I Say to Ms. Galiano After She Passes Me a Kleenex

  Going Home

  Aman, Twin, and Caridad

  Divine Intervention

  Homecoming

  My Mother and I

  Stronger

  Slam Prep

  Ms. Galiano Explains the Five Rules of Slam:

  Xiomara’s Secret Rules of Slam:

  The Poetry Club’s Real Rules of Slam:

  Poetic Justice

  The Afternoon of the Slam

  At the New York Citywide Slam

  Celebrate with Me

  Assignment 5—First and Final Draft

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Praise

  Books by Elizabeth Acevedo

  Back Ad

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  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 heardis 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 plasti
c 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

  It’s not any one thing

  that makes me wonder

  about the capital G.O.D.

  About a holy trinity

  that don’t include the mother.

  It’s all the things.

  Just seems as I got older

  I began to really see

  the way that church

  treats a girl like me differently.

  Sometimes it feels

  all I’m worth is under my skirt

  and not between my ears.

  Sometimes I feel

  that turning the other cheek

  could get someone like my brother killed.

  Sometimes I feel

  my life would be easier

  if I didn’t feel like such a debt

  to a God

  that don’t really seem

  to beout herecheckingfor me.

  “Mami,” I Say to Her on the Walk Home

  The words sit in my belly,