Would you believe me if I told you she loved me, she loved me even with perejil on her breath. She said, I was her garden of Hibiscus, of Bayahibe Roses. She kissed my forehead. A bell was ringing. A light flickered and in it, our arms: the same deep brown like wet earth cradling the Massacre River. Would you believe me if I told you she slept beside me every night since gliding her finger across my teeth to memorize my smile? The landscape cloaked in plum and restless but she'd say sleeping with me was like swaying in tall grass, under the moon-sun, pelicans preening nearby. She professed she loved me tonight, tomorrow night, yesterday too, over and over the lap of jade waves. Come, she'd say, into this field of soft sea grass perfumed with charcoal, perfumed with rosemary, a row of palms for shade. Believe a love like this is possible. That I could follow music in her voice beside a drumming in mine. That my sugar tamed the salt of her words. To sleep, she begged, beside the only person she ever loved. She said this with perejil rolling off her tongue, a tongue promising to gift me cetaceans, jellyfish-scarves, starfish rings, sometimes blood. A tongue that convinced me: sleep is a gentle swing, gentle back and forth, a tangle of our toes, tangle of fingers, tangle of snakebirds in borderless places we'd played before. Believe me, we rewrote the story of our island. We laughed in bed, debating if we were two wings from the same bird, or the bird itself?(2)
Notes 1. Bachata song by Robin Cariño. 2. Image and concept from Manuel Rueda's "Cantos de la frontera" (Songs from the Border), from La criatura terrestre (The Land-Being) (1963).
Hispaniola is made up of the Dominican Republic and Haiti, and as such the larger world habitually envisions divisions between these two nations. Undeniably, present political and social realities reinforce this view. This poem imagines the D.R. and Haiti as lovers. It acknowledges the repressed historical, cultural, political, and social connections between these countries. Additionally, it underscores the need to resist binary thinking that pins individuals against one another.
"Renowned Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti has died at the age of 76 in the Jordanian capital Amman, after spending most of his life in exile....A champion of the Palestinian cause, Barghouti spent years of his life writing about his homeland and the Israeli occupation. He lived in several countries across the region, including in Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq, before returning to Egypt."
Poetry Daily stands with the Black community. We oppose racism, oppression, and police brutality. We will continue to amplify diverse voices in the poetry world. Black Lives Matter.
"Working on the poem, I saw clearly how the recurring image of black hair signifies within the specific context of Asian femininity, and yet in my hands—in my mouth—the phrase 'black hair' began to make space for a second set of values and vulnerabilities as informed by my racially specific experience."
