In conversation with A Hill in the South Bronx, by Perla de Leon
Estoy buscando un árbol que me de sombra
Porque el que tengo me lo van a cortar
Coro de bomba
This building stands,
the last tree to be cut down
in a garden of brick and steel
made desert of rubble and dust.
Excerpt from a speech given by Don Pedro Albizu Campos, Ponce, Puerto Rico, October 12, 1933:
A people’s sense of unity has to come from women … the woman nurtures the unity of a race, the unity of a civilization, the unity of a people … Puerto Rico will be free, Puerto Rico will be sovereign and independent when the Puerto Rican woman feels free, sovereign and independent. And for the Puerto Rican woman to achieve this unity, she has to feel it in her bones…
By MARÍA LUISA ARROYO CRUZADO
June 2018
Ten months ago, rich Puerto Ricans & tourists had the means
to flee first after the hurricane. What about the average María y José?
Where are the names of the dead to make them more human?
Why do the deaths of these U.S. citizens matter less?
a “mixed-use development”—huge shopping mall—in Bonifacio Global City, Metro Manila
Between the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf and The Body Shop
a station of the Cross. On a trodden lawn browning into
desert, two lines are formed for shoppers to be Christ-like.
Christ-lite, puns the Pinoy. The devout come forward to suffer,
put their suffering on display. They’d strap a stretch of varnished
four-by-four across their shoulders, ropes tied around their wingspan
arms, the weight of sins redeemed by Jesus on his march to Calvary.
Born near the Cape Verde Islands, Hurricane Irma swished
her skirts of winds & rain, toyed with Puerto Rico,
stole light from 1,000,000 Puerto Ricans, her eye
on Florida. Some say she roared past like a train
Translated by VALZHYNA MORT
Old Lady Gippius
of a tumorous Adam’s apple
from a damned balcony
watches
an officer fool with a puppy.
they say it’s because they are hard to predict
and even harder to forget
their naming ceremony broadcasted over live feeds, satellite images
insisting she settles on the tongues of both faithful and atheist
By AMY LAWLESS and JEFF ALESSANDRELLI
The way the godly Jupiter paints them,
each butterfly comes to life
upon his brushing of the canvas,
inanimate specter becoming animate
He looked to be in his early 60s: compact build, a designer baseball cap tight on his head, beard close-cropped, clutching a smartphone in his right hand. It was eight in the morning, we were in line at Whole Foods, and the guy was wearing sunglasses.
By JOHN MURILLO
Not sleepwalking, but waking still,
with my hand on a gun, and the gun
in a mouth, and the mouth
on the face of a man on his knees.
Autumn of ’89, and I’m standing
in a section 8 apartment parking lot,
pistol cocked, and staring down
at this man, then up into the mug
of an old woman staring, watering
the single sad flower to the left
of her stoop, the flower also staring,
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