The Poet X Read online

  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 trackswhy 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 menand 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 si
nce 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