that converts into a toddler bed. I’m confused.
But you don’t even have Jordans & we share a bed.
That’s the point, Estrella says.
Her baby will have everything we never had.
I’m still confused. How can we give what we don’t have?
You gotta think about it first, dummy.
Estrella says in order to get what we want
we gotta imagine it first.
She says it’s like
window shopping
for your dreams.
I’m determined to prove I’m not dumb.
Imagination is not real though, duh.
It’s as good as the fiction I read.
Estrella looks at me as if I said something brilliant.
Exactly dummy, now go write yourself a book.
PLAYING HOOKY
Instead of going back to school I meet Church Boy
under the elevated train by the cuchifrito spot
on Knickerbocker.
I miss the sound of the coquí but not more
than I missed the sound of the M train.
I tell Church Boy all about what happened to Mami
and about Puerto Rican history
and ask him if he thinks it’s weird that they
don’t teach us this in school.
Church Boy tells me that I’m talking too much
and kisses me until my heart flutters like
the M train is running right through it.
THE 411
My new job is to spy on Corner Boy Jesus for Estrella.
She wants to make sure he’s not doing nothing
with nobody. Whatever that means.
Today, I report back that I peeped Jesus
give Hermana Santiago’s daughter Nini mad money.
Yo. You think Nini running drugs for Jesus?
Like some kind of child drug ring?
Think about it? Who would suspect a child?
Oh! You know what’s even better than a child drug ring?
Abuelas hustling smack! Yooo that’s genius.
& also real messed up. You think G is in on this?
I want to gossip with Estrella.
I want to laugh and imagine ridiculous worlds.
But she’s not in the mood.
Nini is Jesus’ sister, stupid.
The money is for their mom to pay the bills.
& suddenly I know why
Hermana Santiago is so angry all the time
and also why they have cable.
ESTRELLA GIVES BIRTH
Noah is born on Halloween.
Just like Estrella.
She turned 18
and I know
the newspapers
say teen pregnancy
is a curse that plagues us
but today on her birthday
she declares God gave her
this baby as a birthday gift.
She named the baby Noah.
If I had to guess
she imagined
this exact moment
where she would
get to choose
a name that meant something
a name that changed everything.
Noah, conqueror of floods.
Noah, who made her an ark.
WHEN WE MAKE IT
We’re supposed to wanna get outta here.
When we make it, that’s what we’re supposed to do— leave.
That’s the dream. Make it out the hood.
No one tells us where we’re supposed to go though.
So, I got questions about leaving.
We are supposed to go live where?
& with who?
& if we leave the hood doesn’t that mean we gotta
leave
our friends,
our family,
our bodegas,
our stoops and shit?
Just like the Puerto Ricans who left the island
to come
to the Lower East Side, The Bronx, Bushwick,
Chicago, Florida, Pennsylvania.
But, okay,
say we make it
big enough,
rich enough,
bougie enough
to take everybody with us—we give Goldo
enough money to open a bodega
in the new hood, oh and we give the boys on
the corner
new corners to dream on—then isn’t that just
replicating the same hood
we just tried to leave?
Why are we leaving if we can’t take none of this
shit with us?
If we can’t take no one with us?
Isn’t that just running away from everything that
made us?
Who taught us to be so afraid of ourselves
that the dream is to find new places
& new people to be afraid of us too?
HOW WE HONOR OUR DEAD
The newspapers said it’s real sad to see a new mural
highlighting the death
of another corner hoodlum.
It wasn’t just one of the corner boys. It was Jesus.
The article says the cop that killed him was afraid for his life.
Everyone got questions about that except the news.
They got Jesus’ picture in the black & white mugshot
plastered all over the front page.
Everyone is gathered around the mural telling stories.
Jesus was tryna turn his life around for Estrella and the baby.
He was getting his G.E.D.
Estrella says he talked about being a social worker.
Hermana Santiago said when he was little
her son wanted to be a cop. Ironic.
Maybe to some people
it doesn’t make sense
to talk about a dead person’s dreams
after they are dead.
But we know how important it is to show all of who
a person is.
All of who they could have been.
I agree with the papers.
It is really sad to see a mural for Jesus.
But the newspapers also don’t know shit.
The mural for Jesus is not meant to highlight his death.
It’s meant to celebrate his life.
That’s why we picked the biggest wall
and the dopest graffiti artists in the hood.
That’s why we use the brightest colors
and asked Jesus’ moms for the best picture
she got of him so we can always remember him like that.
In color.
That’s why we light candles
and place them on the block
and airbrush Rest in peace G.O.D.
on T-shirts in the brightest neon letters.
Even if in life we live in the shadows,
in death we live in the light.
HOLY WALLS
At church, the pastor uses the sermon to teach us a lesson. He says the murals glorify the victims of the drug war as if it’s some kind of trophy to have your face on a wall. ¡Amén! He says the neighborhood shouldn’t be a cemetery. ¡Alabanza! It should be a garden. We should plant the seeds of Christ, not bury bodies. ¡Gloria! God should be on the wall, halleluyah! Let’s spray-paint the walls holy. ¡Alábalo que Él vive! On the way home God should be on the wall! replays like a song on a loop.
I walk by Jesus’ mural.
God should be on the wall!
& today he is.
& today he is.
Amen.
ESTRELLA IS
NOT THE SAME
& I recognize this feeling.
We all inherit a sadness we don’t know what to do with.
Some of us stuff it into our laughter.
Others in a suitcase to New York.
Other’s cook with so much sadness
it’s how we salt our food.
We all have plans to go somewhere that’s better than here.
Wherever here is.
But we never plan to die.
No we never plan to die.
NEW WORDS/POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION
A FEELING OF DEEP SADNESS, ANXIETY, ETC., THAT A PERSON CAN FEEL AFTER GIVING BIRTH TO A CHILD
It’s the middle of the night
and baby Noah won’t stop crying
like babies do when they’re hungry
or need their diaper changed
or just want to be held.
Estrella never gets to figure out which one it was
and we never get to figure out if the shrieks
are coming from Estrella or the baby.
We follow the sound
just in time to witness the kind of quiet that happens
when somebody finally gives up.
Estrella has a blanket pressed over the baby’s face
as she rocks him back and forth while singing
something in between an alabanza and a lullaby.
¡Llama a la jara! You know it’s serious when Mami suggests
involving the cops. Mami snatches baby Noah
from Estrella’s arms.
Noah is okay.
Gracias a Dios Mami says.
Today she is God.
Estrella just cries.
She doesn’t fight back or even notice her empty hands
still in the position of a mother rocking her child to sleep.
PSYCHOLOGICAL EVALUATION
The doctor asks Mami why Estrella broke.
She blames our neighborhood,
el Bloque, with all of the fast girls.
In her version of the story,
Estrella is a lonely race car,
engine on, running the streets
wasting gas on men
who will never love her.
The doctor asks Estrella why
she broke. She blames Mami and
her frostbitten fingers.
She explains that Mami is sick
and cold and never loved her.
In her version of the story
she is a lonely race car,
engine off, who knows that waiting
for someone to love you
will drive you crazy.
WE VISIT ESTRELLA AT WOODHULL HOSPITAL
It’s good to see her
laughing.
Estrella jokes
that she comes from
a cracked rib
& that’s why
she’s in here.
I try to join in on the joke.
Word. If you’re part of some
breakdown in God’s design
why are we made to
believe everyone is created
in God’s perfect image?
Maybe if we knew
early on that God
had crazy days too
we wouldn’t be
so ashamed of our own.
Estrella scolds me.
God didn’t have crazy days.
He had creative days.
All of us are different
because God is a motherfucking artist.
I think of Danny & Maravilla
being created in God’s image.
Maybe this even applies to Mami.
God’s perfect image, huh?
If God is creating self-portraits
then we are all just unique variations of God.
ESTRELLA WANTS ME TO KNOW
When she gets out of the hospital
she’s going back to school.
Don’t get it twisted.
She doesn’t think she needs to prove to anyone
that she’s smart or nothing.
Matter fact she already got mad skills
that could maybe
help her graduate faster.
She wants to prove to herself
that she can do it.
& I know what it’s like
to want to be better than yourself.
So I start planning with Estrella.
I sit on her bed just like if it was our stoop.
BROOKLYN WELA ADOPTS THE BABY
Mami says: Don’t worry
you’ll get him back.
In a way that maybe she wishes
someone had told her about Danny.
Estrella says she’s just glad he’s safe.
She’s just glad he’s safe.
BIRTHDAYS ARE STILL THE WORST DAYS
This year my birthday came and went
& no one said a word but I’m still here.
The one thing I learned in Puerto Rico is
that there are worse things than being forgotten.
Like being deliberately erased.
ONE DAY CHURCH BOY STARTS ACTING ALL FUNNY
like he’s tired of hearing about my problems.
It’s not even like
I’m asking him to solve them.
Boys can’t even listen
without feeling
like it’s too much work.
Then leave.
I say this in Mami’s voice
So that I can believe that I mean it.
GAINING WEIGHT
Church Boy says
I am getting fat
been a problem for me.
I am shaped like the moon
& on Knickerbocker Ave.
men howl themselves
into a werewolf at the sight of me.
I AM PREGNANT
Mami knows about it first.
Says I am sleeping too much
& gaining weight real fast.
She buys a pregnancy test
at Duane Reade & asks me
to pee on it. I argue my case
against peeing on the stick
but she sounds like she
wants to forgive me.
For a moment I have a mother
& who wants to pass on that?
MIRROR
& so I’ve seen this before haven’t I?
I am my mother’s reflection.
I am my sister’s shadow.
I am everyone I tried not to be.
I am them.
& they are me.
I TELL ESTRELLA I AM PREGNANT
as she is preparing Tone’s old room
for baby Noah’s return.
She is the happiest I’ve ever seen her
& I don’t want to upset her.
I tell her that I’m worried
I’ll be a bad mother like Mami.
Or that I’ll have terrible postpartum like she did.
Estrella is not upset at all. She reminds me
that I am my own person
on my own journey.
I am my own person
on my own journey.
UNDERSTANDING TRINITY
The mother is not the daughter.
The daughter is not the spirit.
The spirit is not the mother.
They are all God together.
They are all God apart.
NEW WORDS/DETONATE/
TO EXPLODE WITH SUDDEN VIOLENCE
Church Boy said he’s not ready to be a father.
I gotta approach this wisely.
If I curse him out, I may lose him.
If I stay quiet, I may lose myself.
Mami taught me how to scream
with my mouth closed.
I get my loud from her.
My who you think you talking to from her.
Even when she is quiet
there are explosions going off inside of her.
I detonate like her sometimes.
It scares me.
Mami taught me how lethal
a woman’s mouth could be.
How it could cut someone sin cuchilla.
How to spit a knife straight through a heart.
How my mouth is an open wound.
A pocket that stores the weapon.
DISCIPLINA
The pastor sighs like he knew I was trouble
since Piano Man.
His wife smiles and holds my hand
while the pastor tells me how things will be
different. There’s a section in the back of the church
for sinners. Like hell? I think.
People who fall from God’s grace, his wife interrupts.
I’m not allowed to lead church service anymore.
I can only approach the pulpit when I am called to do so.
Or when you need prayer,
the pastor’s wife interrupts again.
I am not allowed to play any instruments;
not the tambourine,
not the clave, not the güiro and not the drums.
You can still clap
and use your vocal instrument to praise the lord.
She’s full of useless good news.
Who will play the drums? I ask.
Church Boy will, the pastor says.
Until they find a replacement.
Both of us have sinned
but only one of us fell short
from the glory of God.
BREAKING UP WITH CHURCH BOY
I told Church Boy I didn’t need him.
Sometimes you gotta remind boys of that fact.