My DNA test

If you perform a DNA test
to understand better
my genealogy
you will find as my mother
poetry
and my father
acryclic.

For, I am constructed
of origami and rhyme;
and each cell in my body
is an unknown color,
speaking
in a stranger's voice -
Stitching together an aging fetus;
a mosaic
of multiple identities.

Populating my chromosomes
are brushstrokes and homonyms,
phonetics and similes,
and a galaxy of metaphors;
Giving me a definition
without gender or a race -
An olive skin,
eyes
the color of November leaves
desires diffuse as the morning mist
and a future
buried in art.

On Broadway and Other Details

I.

When you sang on stage,
Cynthia White,
I stared at your neck;
Noticing
your vocal cords rise and fall
like tides
on a full moon night.

Your voice itself
so moist and soft,
they nourished my ears
and soothed my mind.
And washed my body
in ripples of sound,
dissolving out of sight.

II.

At the Accounting workshop,
last Monday night,
you wore a necklace
with shiny beads
the color of boiling milk -
Round and smooth like marbles
onto which the ceiling lights
reflected.

I wanted
so desperately
to grab it from your neck
and put it around my own,
paint my eye lids
dark burgundy,
and my lips,
a grassy green,
wear a dress
of Chantilly lace
and dance a mazurka
to the anthem of winds
bellowing outside our window.

Instead,
I punched numbers
into a mechanical calculator
and took interview notes
in my yellow Moleskine,
bowing to the needs
of professional demands -
To make businesses thrive
across numerous generations
and build
a perfect world.

III.

In the cafeteria
on Washington Street,
you adjusted your glasses,
cleared your throat,
craned your neck
over a cup of Joe,
and asked in a whisper -
Are you in love with me?

I said,
No,
staring at a bunch of pink anemones
seated in a vase
at the center of our table.

You said,
Really?
Oh.
Okay.
I thought you were.

Shame flooded your cheeks,
and knelt over your eyes.
And we lowered our heads
rattled our spoons,
watched the streams
of morning sunlight
peering through tops
of honeylocust branches -
while the speakers overhead
played on repeat
Donna Summer's
Love you Baby.

Observations

I.

Your eyes, John Kuzma,
look like aged hazelnuts
with two dots of hollow -
Light and thin and crisp,
perfectly round, and mildly opaque.

It makes me want to hold your face
and smell your eyes;
feel the texture
of your utensils of sight -
And peer into your thoughts,
with the knowledge of fear,
Burri's trauma of painting,
and the dimensions of our universe
in riot with the moon.

II.

You styled your hair
with pomade and grooming spray.
Raised and spread out
the tuft
bouncing over your forehead -
In the shape of a Japanese fan at summertime,
or the plumage of a dancing peacock
in the middle of Monsoon.

Your face defies the lyric
of a cognizant businessman,
devoutly successful,
yet unhappy.

A herringbone print
see-saws over your coat,
but your jaws still hold 
fingerprints
of the last words you spoke
before the divorce -
Marge, I fucking hate you.
Give me the kids and leave.

III.

Yesterday,
on the 7 train to Bliss Street,
you were reading a book of poems
by Gregory Pardlo.
But in between the pages
was a pamphlet
which read in bold purple print,
MALE INFERTILITY? YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

Was that for you?
I imagine your name is Blake,
or Theodore.
Do you intend to father children
yet cannot?
Do you imagine a daughter, Isadora,
and a son -Daniel,
with matching cribs in nurseries
hypnotizing them with sounds
of rhyme and laughter?
Is it awkward at family gatherings,
when they wonder about her ability to mother,
to be fertile or bear children?

How mysterious life is sometimes,
I wonder.

IV.

At the Waldorf Astoria,
We met by the registration desk.
You introduced yourself
as Afya Bora -
Your skin was as black
as an evening shadow,
and your eyes were whiter
than ocean pearls.
A lariat of diamonds
spun around your neck,
as tender as a Christmas hellebore.

What brings you here today?
You said,
I raise money
for young men and women
in my home country of Kenya -
Who get killed for being
homosexuals.
Here, you'll are so lucky;
Parents accept everything so easily.

I smiled
and remained silent.
And watched from a distance
an assortment of guests
toasting to marriage equality.

In February

I.

During our conversation
at the supermarket,
you said,
My body has betrayed me again, Tony -
A third time;
upon cancer
lining your menopausal ovaries.

I said,
But what if, Henriette,
this time around,
you
betrayed your body instead?

II.

Some day, Brandy Kay,
We will be on the road,
to Tennessee, Niagara
and the Adirondacks.

Under a clear blue sky,
cloudless and fragrant,
valleys and creeks shimmying
in the inconstancy of mirage,
we will hold hands
and talk of love,
adventure,
and endless possibilities.

III.

We made love
as teenagers
in the middle
of a Calendula farm -
by the bayou
in Galveston,
with Spring as our witness,
and disobedient winds.
Our breaths forming clouds,
our veins turning pink.

Since then,
we have grown 
a million miles apart. 

IV.

On nights when it rains,
and thunderbolts bisect
the pepper farms and lakes,
I want to tell you, Richmond,
a secret -
In the dark
so I may hide my tears,
my imperfections,
and the gullibility
that my face betrays.

I despise 
the color of my skin -
So much, that sometimes
when I look into
the mirror
standing in my living room,
I look through my reflection.
Trying to un-see
what faces me
permanently.  

Feeling Free

If I could,
Jeremiah,
I would hang from your name
carved in aluminum blocks.
Arms in O's
Legs like L's,
in vertical swings
like tuning bells.

Inverted lips,
like blanched peonies,
and a hat on my head
of mashed newspapers -
That once held articles
of Kennedy's assassin,
Obama's Nobel prize,
and the death
of David Kirby.

 

On Philanthropy

I.

Show us photographs
of the unfortunate children
at the grandiose ballroom;
Sometimes cancerous,
sometimes orphaned -
eyes hollow with AIDS,
ribs caged with hunger,
faces charred with indigence.

And it rouses among us,
pity - a derivative of Sorrow;
Which is
the universal mother of emotions,
as primal as a cosmic waltz - 
Pedigreed along the tree of life.

At the banquet today,
fill up our flutes.

Let us eat steak
and a basket of bread.
Make a toast
and take a vow
to better this world,
walk for causes,
and stamp names on circulated bulletins.

This is how we do
Philanthropy -
A ceremony of gift giving.

God bless America.
God bless the Queen.
 

Lost Details

I.

Your mustache looked
like the silhouette of an umbrella
sprawled over your lips -
the color of midnight,
the texture of grass;
leaving a line down your philtrum
a gap
through which tears can race
sing ballads and praise, 
and vanish
without a trace.

II.

Janice Rodriguez -
I saw you, yesterday,
Staring at a cabbage.
Mumbling a telephone number
Tied to your braids;
Your hair as thick as the Bible.
Your eyes, so large
and round,
You could fit into them
a zoo,
an elm,
a library of candles,
and Saturn.

III.

While reading a stanza
from Goethe's Prometheus,
I looked up
and noticed
on the bowl of the spoon,
an inverted image of the world outside.
Clouds floating.
The sky in labor.

I picked it up,
and gave a lick,
tasting clouds,
water,
and in turn,
a corner of the Universe.

IV.

Helen,
Do you think peacocks
or butterflies
wonder about their destinies?
Do lilies cry?
Do cherry blossoms make love?
Do finches discriminate
against the colors of their beaks?

V.

My name
is Tony Roy -
A biracial fruit
of a Spanish mother and an Indian father,
with skin
the color of burnt sulfur.

What I do
a majority of my evenings
is listen to the limericks
of your Polaroid shutters,
count my breaths,
play piano to the rain,
and applaud.
 

Winter Storm Jonas

Wake up, Odalis, wake up -

They're here, the snow flakes
in clusters, like unstemmed
cauliflower florets,
knocking on your window pane.

They wear invisible crowns of mist,
that crystallize from water drops
the size of grapes or honeydews,
into symmetric arrangements of needles -
A plethora of shapes, some
reproducible in paper cutouts, and some
more uniquely creative; the result of
physical forces like pressure and wind velocities,
that flatten molecules
and press hydro-oxygen atoms
into geometries that create magic,
that sparkle like beads of mica,
that glimmer like iridescent sequins,
that shiver in its lattices,
and vibrate like abacus balls.

Your visitors are
a pale monochrome, white as milk,
created by absorbing the very colors
that distinguish Autumn from Apartheid,
that distinguish malaise from Minetta prints.

They float and swirl
through topographies and ecosystems
across regions, where birds
are flightless,
and Spring is a prehistoric footprint,
and settle on the tarmac of the road
in front of your door,
where ambulances are engaged
in skirmishes between the living and the dead,
flashing lights that glow
a raspberry red and aquamarine.
Someone today will die, and
someone will birth,
and the circle of life will continue
in the way calendars are marked;
a cyclic process that never ends -
Not until you and I become fodder
for the Bougainvillea vines and forget-me-nots
in the forest by the hills.

Your visitors have grown
to hundreds of billions, and
are clones with identical names, Jonas,
Which translates in Hebrew to
the Gift from God.
They fall to the ground,
Tumble gently, and cover the fountains
In anatomies of tulle and organza silk.
Icicles hang from the eyelashes
of streetlights, shaped like pyramids
and ice cream cones - unswayed
By winds roaring across the
lapel of the city at eighty five miles an hour.

Wake up, Odalis, wake up.
They're here, the snow flakes,
singing by your window pane,
smiling at your curtain rings -
While the sun is asleep,
behind a woolly gray sky,
and the moon is bathing in darkness.

On Thursday Morning

What I want today is to lay
on a bed of myrtles
and have the rain wash over me
Gently, yet erotically
Like we were in an orgy;
Drops, in acrobatic trajectories,
Tumbling down my cheeks,
My chest, and my narrow abdomen.
My head, tilted East,
My fingers trembling with the boiling hormones
My brain howling,
My eyes meditating, like iridescent orbs on which
Shadows of galaxies converge in a cone.
On which pockets of shadows become permanent dreams.
On which pixels and voxels carving reality
Become summer clouds or smoke.
My legs form the rivers
On which hyacinths grow, and lilies blossom,
Across which X-rays of water waves
Buckle into sounds of the magical Winter,
That is now.
 
Four degrees, Thursday morning,
I see the moon on the Eastside sidewalk,
Like a broken bowl of white porcelain,
Waiting for the evening,
To make love to the clouds.

Birthday Present

If I had at my disposal the ownership of Nature,
I would give to you, as your Birthday presents,
A garden of periwinkles, a tropical river,
A basket of hydrangeas, and a bottle of sunlight.

Instead, I gave you a greeting card,
Bought yesterday at the paper store,
With an image of a fluffy cake, covered
In buttercream and rainbow sprinkles.
And nine candles with colored stripes,
Rooted within. 

 

January

For Eva, my dead sunflower.

I.

From the aircraft, the clouds look like clumps of wisteria blossoms. And the sky is an emulsion of orange and pink. The sun is hazy along the Western horizon, where waves and froth from water bodies smoothen out and burble. I hear the sounds the bubbles make, imagine a river flowing through my body, and smile to myself.

What comes to mind is the Mourner's Prayer, the one you say at the synagogue each week in memory of your grandmother Denise, and the millions of Jews who died in the Holocaust having no one left to pray for them. Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’mei raba... Your eyes well up with tears, and we hug in consolation. Memories are all we have.

II.

I close my eyes, and an image of you floats in front of me. You, walking through a garden of wild nasturtiums, in a watered silk shirt and marigold culottes, with birds-of-paradise feathers hemmed to your collar, carrying in your left hand a copy of The Kite Runner, and in your right, a mandolin. The Santa Ana winds are percussing your face, creating an accordion of sounds and murmurs. And against the canvas of a bright copper sky, knots of clouds are floating.

III.

I ask you, Ida, did you hear the sound of rain at night? You say, Of course I did, it was beautiful; like a clamoring of pearls, like the whistling of rummaging thrush birds. But do you know, Ida, how old Monsoon is? You say, I don't, but the ocean does. 

IV.

I bought you at the Queens Market near Sunnyside in September, and now you are dying of frostbite from when I was away in Santa Catarina, short of unfurling your petals. Your green stem is now a piece of wire, and the leaves are stiff, rattling in the winds. As morbid as it may seem, you are like my dead baby, with a date of birth, an expiration, and a bundle of memories.

So long Eva Jane, may you rest in peace.
 

In Houston, Tonight

In my hotel room tonight,
I imagine you asleep,
like a tender stephanotis,
Your lips at a distance,
curved like rainbows,
reminiscing dreams from Belgium -
The sky is a shade of indigo
And the clouds are restless on the horizon.

On the ottoman, you look
Like a folded leaf;
gazing at a distance, where the world
behind your glass windows,
rests on your shoulder.
And sings of silence,
the galaxy, and azalea farms.

 

New Year's Eve

Against the lights, that glimmered
like polychromatic crystals,
along the French windows,
of the downtown restaurant,
you looked young
and fresh, and energetic.

Your skin was the color
of gardenia petals,
and your eyes,
the color of the universe.

Pages from a Sketchbook

V.

December seventeenth, 2015. Upper East Side, East 71st Street and Lexington Avenue. The evening stretches across a cloudless sky, over the balcony where I sit with ink and paper, gazing at the stars, thinking, intermittently, about Christmas lights and Eddie John.

I was at Bergdorf Goodman yesterday looking at window displays at the Women's storefront, when a Korean man walked up to me and said, Photography please? For mother of dead child. Home, across waves. I dropped my tote bag on the sidewalk, as he positioned himself in front of the 'Crown Jewels', and took three photographs on his phone -two vertical, one horizontal, without flash. He shook my hand, and thanked me, as I noticed the reflections of two sparkling lions floating across his eyeballs. Last time New York, bad lung cancer. They say metastases into my brain, he remarked. A chortle resurfaced. And he left, a shadow following him, resizing in dimensionality across pleats of lights strung from poles like sparkling sequins. I never got his name, and I forgot my tote bag. But I thought of oleander, the plant, its red pigmentation, and mother of a dead child on Christmas.

When I reached 'Gliterrati -Swarovski', I paused for a minute and put eye drops on my left eye. Passersby were headed South to Saks Fifth Avenue, and tourists with expensive cameras chattered about the miracle of New York during autumn and the holiday-time. I had felt nostalgic all day after seeing a photograph of Mother on Facebook at an aunt's birthday party on Belvedere Road, as I stared at the wrinkles bunching around her eyes as a pronouncement of age and wept out loud; my mother, who I have not seen in five whole years, and who I can only recollect through photographs and images. And seeing mothers embracing sons and grandsons in the middle of the holiday crowd, only escalated my nostalgia. Despite my misgivings, I stared at the Gliterrati display for several minutes, and noticed in its midst a pair of diamond chandeliers, tiered cakes made of zircon, three mannequins studded with peridots and emerald cloaks, a guitar made of amethyst, a candle made of ruby, and ice cream cones made of sapphire. Strings of garnet hung from the ceiling, and fake flames of tourmaline quivered to mechanized gusts of ventilation, internalized within the seams of a Swarovski display. The set sparkled and dazzled with flashes of lights, and occasionally, volcanoes of pearls spurt in angles and fell to the floor, trailing tracks designed with citrine and bloodstones. Cherry blossoms of rubies sprouted at the edges, and curtains of twill aquamarine hung below. A gliterrati, literally, so bold and powerful, so magical and magnificent, that the intensity of the moment along with nostalgia made me cry, quietly, as the tears fell and disappeared into my skin.