“Languages”

-for my dad and his insistence on traveling — out of the US, and not to disney.

How I dislike,

English only. Only English. How to translate

Myself

While teaching. The majority of ELL’s in my district? Spanish and Kreyol speaking. It’s a blessing

To see Dominicans and Haitians

Together. Building in a foreign land.

Those are my roots. Haitians who ran the Black (American) Student Center, after school.

Their mix , there, support of my short stories. Safety. The only ones I would read for

Gaellic and Irish oppression brogue. 5 gallon paint buckets. And job postings for

Illegal immigrants

In the pub…

of French and West African beer on tap

Idiomatic expressions. And Independence, from English oppression.

Djon Djon and Pwa and Touissant, and my crushes on

Edwidge Danticat and Jaques Roumain, in

Cuba. A free college education. Free hospitalization is

A Jamaican woman drinking rum and building with us.

Guantanamo bay, ain’t a US base. It’s Haitian descendants, who speak

Spanish,

Outside her medical school.

Doctors

Without Borders

All over the world. You can see it on a clear day,

In that part of the Island.

Where we were told not to speak loudly about

Being gay. Though gay people are all over Cuba. Transient.

Unspoken

Mon, inna Likkle London, milking the goat I used to ride, and the river I bathed in. And the rain pouring down at high noon just to stop

As quickly as it had begun.

Outside a sugar cane field.

With my bathing suit and tie dyes

on

12 years old and shouldn’t be smoking no

Ganja

by the pound. Dominoes in the road. And always the daughter of my father.

Never

My

Name. Unchanged.

The french in the middle

of it.

Like my own — Portuguese, from a people created in the slave trade of uninhabited islands.

Bom dia? To Mr. Teixeira. Who got the best katchupa in town…

Mofongo. Don’t that sound black yo? A remedy when you’re sick. And platanos maduros though tostones are the unsweetened staple.

Cultural

quiet girl.

Listening to

Black and brown people. I don’t know what they know.

James Baldwin, leaving cuz of

Algerian

Persecution. Salaam habibi walaalkey walaalshey, seetahay today?

How to disappear a whole people. How to disappear like James, into pages, when you belong everywhere

And nowhere.

Where you belong.