I’ve never seen her hands touch any of us like that.
She looks mad happy, yo. Today we’re mad happy, yo.
I can count these moments on one hand
but maybe I’ll need a new hand soon.
KUMBAYA
Danny is taking a nap
& Mami shoots Estrella & me a warning
to keep it down.
Danny has mad energy.
Mami spends most of hers
running around after him.
That could be stressful
but these days I haven’t heard her complain once.
She seems so happy lately.
Like she found peace.
She even asks us what we want to eat.
Like Lala’s mom does.
It’s weird.
It’s like she’s normal.
Estrella & I don’t ask questions
’cause we don’t wanna jinx it.
But we shoot each other WTF stares
whenever Mami helps Danny get dressed
or suggests we should sing
a corito together as a family.
It’s like we’re in some weird Christian camp
and Mami is the suspiciously nice camp counselor
who has a secret
we can’t quite figure out.
PROFESSIONAL SPANISH KNOCKS ON THE DOOR
At first we don’t answer.
Knocks that loud usually mean 5-0 is on the other end.
Señora, ábrenos la puerta por favor.
Estamos aquí para platicar con usted.
No queremos llamar la policía.
The person on the other side of the door
is speaking professional Spanish.
Professional Spanish is fake friendly.
Is a warning.
Is a downpour when you
just spent your last $20 on a wash and set.
Is the kind of Spanish that comes
to take things away from you.
The kind of Spanish that looks at your Spanish
like it needs help.
Professional Spanish of course doesn’t offer help.
It just wants you to know that it knows you need some.
Professional Spanish is stuck-up
like most people from the hood who get good jobs.
Professional Spanish is all like
I did it, you can do it too.
Professional Spanish thinks
it gets treated better than us
because it knows how to follow the rules.
Because it says abrigo instead of có.
Because it knows which fork belongs to the salad
and which spoon goes in the coffee.
Because it gets to be the anchor
on Telemundo and Univision
and we get to be the news
that plays behind its head in the background.
DANNY IS KIDNAPPED
Before we can stop him
Danny opens the door for the people
speaking professional Spanish.
Two cops immediately grab Danny
by his arms and wrists as if
he were under arrest.
Professional Spanish lady tries to restrain Mami,
who’s yelling at the men to let go of Danny.
Everybody is screaming
but nobody is saying anything.
What’s going on?
I don’t know if Estrella wants to help
or is just being nosy.
Your mother violated her visitation rights.
Danny was supposed to be back at the group home two days ago.
Mami is still screaming like she’s wounded
and someone ripped the Band-Aid off.
In this case if happiness is the Band-Aid,
then the wound is losing another kid so soon.
BUSHWICK LIBRARY
every Saturday.
If there wasn’t a time limit on how long you can neglect
your kids before it becomes abandon,
maaaaan, Mami would leave us there ’til Sunday.
The library gives Mami a vacation from us.
For one day she gets to live inside of a world
where she doesn’t have to be someone’s mother.
A miracle even Jesus would be proud of.
& maybe that makes her sound like a bad mom—
but I love Mami for this ’cause for one day
we get to live inside of a book
and be somebody else too.
BOOKS WE READ
The neighborhoods in the books we read
have nice houses.
The houses in the books we read
don’t have rats & roaches.
The rats & roaches in the books we read
are cute, magical and friendly.
The friends in the books we read
come from rich families.
The families in the books we read
communicate with words.
The words in the books we read
don’t curse.
The curses in the books we read
are broken with love.
The love in the books we read
always wins.
Winning is always how the story ends.
The end of the story means we return to real life.
YOU GOT POTENTIAL
I am supposed to be someone. Someday.
If I really want to be. If I keep my grades up.
That’s what my teachers keep telling me.
My potential is something they like to throw in my face.
They use that word like it’s a gift that I won’t open or some shit.
They say that I can be or do anything I want.
They say that like they almost believe it.
Pero, like, what exactly do they mean
I could be someone if I really wanted to?
So, who do they think I am now?
ASK ME ANYTHING DAY WITH MS. RIVERA
Today we learned Ms. Rivera still lives in the hood.
Her hood is in the Bronx. That’s where Papi lives.
I’ve never visited. We really don’t leave the block.
Also, the Bronx sounds mad far.
Ms. Rivera said Puerto Ricans live there as well.
She said the Bronx is where hip-hop was born.
Some say it’s where salsa was born too.
She said the music we bop to was birthed by all of us.
I look around. All of us are Puerto Rican, Black American, Dominican, Mexican, Ecuadorian, Salvadorian.
Man, all of us are everything except White American.
I wonder where they go to school?
I look around and remember how we danced
in homeroom when Biggie died.
Lala’s sleepover with the Spice Girls.
Our Pentecostal coritos and all the tunes
I sneak listen to on hot 97.
The thought of us birthing music makes me smile.
I tell Lala that I think it’s cool to know
that we could give birth to something
other than babies. ’Cause I heard having a baby hurts. Lala agrees that it’s real cool to know
that we could give birth to something other than pain.
MY LIFE AS A SALSA SONG
LA VIDA TE DA SORPRESAS
I take advantage of Ask Me Anything Day
and try and find out how much Ms. Rivera gets paid.
Ayo, Miss. How you make all this money
and still live in the hood?
Ms. Rivera laughs
and says: What money? Where?
She then adds that not everybody
can leave the hood & also not everybody
wants to leave the hood.
& that’s news to me.
Maaaan.
That’s news to me.
CODE SWITCH
I’m learning new words
so that I can sprinkle them
in between the old words.
Like if I say my life is not off
to a very auspicious start.
I mean or I think I mean
that shit is wild in Bushwick.
One day if I ever write a book
I’ll use that word in a way
that makes more sense.
A book where all the new words
will be next to all the old words
Each one brilliant and mattering.
NEW WORDS/IRONIC/
SOMETHING THAT IS EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT IS MEANT OR EXPECTED TO HAPPEN
Today Lala & I decide to see if
Papo is posted up with his carrito
inside Maria Hernandez Park
so we can buy some beaded necklaces from him for the parade.
Maria Hernandez was shot
through her window in 1989.
Maria and her husband were known
for tryna clean up Bushwick.
They were supposed to be the heroes
in the story of The War on Drugs.
The newspapers reported
that she was revenge murdered by local drug dealers.
Today the park where all the people who get high sleep
& all the dealers deal
is named after her.
NEW WORDS/PRESERVATION/
TO KEEP ALIVE OR IN EXISTENCE
Everything in Bushwick lasts longer than it needs to.
Preservation is a skill you learn in the hood.
We do things Bill Nye the Science Guy would
be proud of: keep butter containers to store our food,
use old clothes for rags.
Even the way people love
in the hood has to be built to last.
Love in the hood is a kind of loyalty
to your own survival.
Everyone lived by this, even Maria.
Even the dealers who killed her.
HOW WE GOT OUR NAMES
NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH
When our parents don’t help us.
We blame Mami & Papi for not loving us enough.
When the banks don’t help us.
We blame jobs for not hiring us enough.
When the schools don’t help us.
We blame ourselves for not learning enough.
When the hospitals don’t help us.
We blame the medicines for not working enough.
When the church don’t help us.
We blame God for not listening enough.
When the cops don’t help us.
We blame ourselves & start policing each other.
We don’t help us.
Only we help us.
116TH STREET FESTIVAL
It’s the second Saturday in June. The Puerto Rican Day Parade is tomorrow but everybody knows that the festival is where we get to shine. Lala and I are decked out head to toe in the flag but it’s not enough so we find Papo who is selling Puerto Rican flag necklaces out of a shopping cart and we just know we gotta have one. Two! Three? No, that’s too much. Oh! Snap! Papo got whistles and bandanas?! We’re copping that too! Lala buys a top hat striped with the flag that kind of makes her look like a Puerto Rican Mad Hatter. We bop down the streets like we’re trying to prove something to somebody. We stop to watch a couple of OGs dance to El Gran Combo’s “Un Verano en Nueva York.” We can’t dance salsa so Lala and I clap and lean our bodies toward the boombox. The dancing couple nods our way, a salute to the way Lala and I wave our flag-drenched bodies towards their swing. The woman grabs her long skirt, a flag of her own, and waves it back toward us. I don’t know if it was the long skirt or if it was the way she seemed to be possessed by some spirit, holy or other, but for a second the woman turns into Mami & it’s so good to see her dancing & not worrying about bills or food. It’s so good to see a crowd around her as if she were a god we all gathered to worship. I clap a little harder than I would at church. Excited to see the possibility of freedom right in front of me. This is the rapture I wait for.
QUÉ BONITA BANDERA
Señor Maví peeps Lala and me getting ready
to head down to the Puerto Rican Day Parade
on Knickerbocker Avenue.
¡Mira! Qué chévere.
¡Boricua hasta el fin!
¿Pero qué saben
ustedes de Puerto Rico?
Lala and I don’t answer
partly because we’re insulted
and partly because he’s right;
we don’t really know shit about Puerto Rico.
Señor Maví shakes his head
like he’s disappointed.
He says that we need to learn our history
because the flag we’re waving means something.
Había un tiempo en cual la ley
prohibía hasta tener una bandera.
I can’t imagine the Puerto Rican flag
ever having been illegal to own.
Ay. Mister. That was a long time ago, Lala says, annoyed.
You can’t be stuck in the past, Señor. Where’s your flag?
Señor Maví tips his brown felt brimmed hat,
taps the one pocket on the left side
of his white button-down shirt.
My fla’ is hea’.
He says, in an English that doesn’t pronounce the g in flag.
My fla’ is hea’.
THE PUERTO RICAN DAY PARADE ON KNICKERBOCKER AVENUE
The Puerto Rican Day Parade on Knickerbocker Avenue is
the unofficial official parade ’cause it takes place on
our turf & on our terms.
The police try and shut the parade down
every year ’cause dique we don’t got no permit to gather
but Puerto Ricans know asking for permission never got
us nowhere & so we just celebrate now & worry
about the consequences later. Lala and I make our way
through the crowd starting at Circo’s Bakery & walk
seven blocks all the way to Tony’s Pizza.
Lala & I point out things to each other
making sure we don’t miss anything
like the adorable toddler representing
with the Boricua T-shirt
sitting curiously on her mother’s shoulders.
Or the lady selling cheese, beef & chicken empanadas.
Or the cops who are having a good time
but don’t wanna show it.
Move it along. Move it along.
The domino tables and oversized speakers
on the side streets where the dancing happens.
The cars block the streets and you can’t tell
if the horns honking are Puerto Ricans
or people telling Puerto Ricans to get out of the way.
I wonder if Señor Maví would say this is history.
I decide it is.
I decide it is.
WE MAKE THE NEWS
Tonight, I switched through all the channels to look for Lala and her Puerto Rican Mad Hatter hat
or Papo and his carrito, or the OG couple dancing,
or the representing-ass toddler.
Instead, people are asking the mayor to pass new laws
that would stop the parade.
We get together and they call us a mob.
We laugh and they call it a riot.
Next week, I’ll be the first person
to graduate 8th grade in my family.
That’s history in somebody’s books. No?
That’s worthy of making the news. No?
But nothing good we do makes the news.
Nothing good we do makes the news.
THE MAYOR SAYS:
I DON’T THINK YOUTH PROGRAMS WILL HELP
because he says we are hardened criminals
who are all in gangs and need jail, not sewing lessons.
Lala, Estrella & I are on the stoop laughing
at the latest bochinche on the news.
Why the hell would we want sewing lessons?
I think of Mami & her job at la factoría.
I mean, maybe you could sew yourself some pants.
Lala chimes in with the Pentecostal jokes.
The mayor wouldn’t survive one day
in the hood. Estrella sucks her teeth hard.
Julie stumbles out of the hallway
to tell us that she’s trying to sleep
& we’re too loud.
IF YOU CARE TO LOOK CLOSELY
the war on drugs
is also a war on people.
But in Bushwick,
no one cares to look closely.
THE WAR ON ROACHES
The roaches wear our clothes and eat our bootleg
Lucky Charms.
They hitch rides in our fake JanSports
& embarrass us in school.
They have meetings when we’re asleep
about how they’re going to take over.
At night they gather in the kitchen by the hundreds
but I suspect there could be thousands of them.
I only know ’cause one time I turned on the light
and caught them marching
like they were in a parade