2020

1.
De niños, junto a un faro, nos creíamos
que ante la oscuridad y las tormentas
los barcos precisaban de la luz.
Hoy sabemos que éramos nosotros
los que más se ayudaban de esa creencia.
 
Tal vez sea mejor
que todo siga su cauce:
dejar de imaginar, de escribir,
dejar que, incluso en contra suya,
todo siga su cauce.
 
2.
En ocasiones nada es la mejor solución:
comprobar, sin más, que los días
       se engarzan a una arena infalible,
que denigrados los libros
       desertan de los estantes,
que prematuramente los cuerpos
       se avienen a la ceniza
       —los ojos, al vacío—,
que no sirve ya la pregunta
de cuál es o cuál podría ser…,
ni tampoco la respuesta
de que en ocasiones nada
—este poema incluido--
sea la mejor solución.

REVERSO

Reconocer nuestra parcialidad
       nos hace imparciales:
creernos imparciales
       nos lleva a la parcialidad.
 
«Oíd, amigos, la revolución ha fracasado.
Subid las campanas de nuevo al campanario,
devolvedle la sotana al cura y al capataz el látigo»,
escribió León Felipe hace décadas sin incluir
el siguiente reverso tan familiar:
 
Camaradas, oíd: La revolución ha triunfado.
Subid el nuevo (es un decir) pendón al campanario,
y sin dejar de aplaudir a los torcidos
funcionarios de turno, vedlos cómo se invisten
con la sotana del cura y el látigo del capataz.

Jesús J. Barquet, born in Havana, Cuba, arrived in the U.S. in 1980 via the Mariel Boatlift. He won the “Letras de Oro Prize” for his Consagración de La Habana (1991) and the “Lourdes Casal Prize” for his Escrituras poéticas de una nación (1998), and was Second Prize Winner of “Chicano-Latino Poetry” for his Un no rompido sueño (1994). Among his books of poetry are Sagradas herejías, Sin fecha de extinción, Aguja de diversos, and the compilation Cuerpos del delirio. He is founder and Editor in Chief of La Mirada publishing house since 2014.

Call me Niña
NO,
Pinta,
NO,
Santa Maria
Maybe just Maria... Don’t call me santa I’m not a saint.
 
When I die:
Anoint my lips with mango juice and a little bit of warm aguapanela, so that even in death
I’ll think of my mother.
Wrap me in hojas de platano como un tamal, and float me down the Magdalena.
Float with Magdalena.
Mary and Magdalene. Mary Magdalene.

I’ve lost track of what I look like.
My skin, hair, eyes, lips, nose.
Just rooms full of Marias
Let’s pretend I don’t exist,
Then you don’t have to call me anything at all.
 
When I was 18:
my boyfriend at the time told me he liked that we were in an interracial relationship.
That I was exotic. Unlike other girls.
Standing at the kitchen sink I took a second, then a breath.
The soap dish slithered from my hands, sending shards both seen and unseen.
All these years I thought we grew together, roots entangled but
mine had built bars around me, for safe keeping
while his had built a pedestal from which to better observe me.
 
Inside, in the place I can’t reach, but only feel.
I was the hand in front of my own face.
I had seen converging rivers, while he had seen–
well I don’t even know,
When we had sex I could only ever cum if I was on top.
That’ll show him.
Show him what?
 
I’ve lost track of what I look like.
 
At 21:
I slept with a woman, she was like me.
Don’t tell my mother. Don’t break her heart.
I let her lips close ‘round the roundness of my–
My lips on the wetness of her–
Ran my tongue down the valley-
I thought I saw–
***
God. Oh god.
Salt of my salt.
Afterwards we lay in bed together, thighs pressed against thighs and
I had to swallow hard at the lump in my throat when I realized
I couldn’t really love her because
I couldn’t love myself.
 
What do I look like?
 
Somewhere in the middle of the ocean of time and space there’s a transatlantic graveyard where drums reverberate in cool Atlantic waters.
Even after all this time,
We carry those rhythms in the beating of hearts, the beating of dancing steps.
These trees have been ripped out, roots raw and bloody seeking fertile grounds,
These roots seeking the warmth of a familiar sun,
The warmth of a familiar song.

I tried to grow on this rocky presbyterian mountain range, but no matter how much you water,
Guava trees will never give apples. ​

The true epitome of una chingona mexicana
Una loba known to no boundaries
Una mamá who with daring capabilities
dives into the mask that lies behind
El Machismo
The same mask that deceives the eye
Con “la cortesía”
How is it that those hazel eyes melt of autumn
That fender and tames the serpent,
sheer into their masks?
 
Tres guerreros productos de una guerrera
Body scarred from boundless battles
Pero luchadora
And you are mi espada
The same espada my abuelitos
Handed over to you
 
El barrio was your casa
It’s mi casa
Where las mañanitas became my sixth sense
Where la señora de la panadería yelled
¡Buenos días!
 
You and your curls shared a love-hate relationship
Wilfully chaotic, yet
unpleasant with the kiss of rain.
 
You’ve become the glistening moon
and my Midas touch.
Your hand gripped onto mine,
afraid
            of
                  letting
                             go.
Tonight, let your long shades of brown
hair cascade
y canta a la rorro niño
Concealing my eyes from the light
And let your warmth tell me
I can defy any tempest.

Omar Limias, a first-generation Chicano writer born to a working-class family, is an undergraduate student at the University of Illinois at Chicago, majoring in English with a concentration in creative writing. Of himself, he writes, “Through his veins runs Purépecha and Mixtec blood, through his heart and soul runs his Mexican heritage, and through political and social consciousness grounded on the Southwest side of Chicago runs his Chicano identity.”