DELICATES
In the showers of men we leave our bodies
tied well to the solar pipes
We mark our territory like animals in heat
our panties saturated with sand and a sidereal isolating odor
Remains of the sex we had yesterday left behind in bathrooms
rose water and wax drippings from vanilla-scented candles
Broken tears in the profane lace of dawn
My earrings have disappeared lost in the soap of a brief lust
and Sir the creams anoint your sheets like venom from silvered goddesses
Watch how we snatch freedom from their minds
We open blame under the expanded umbrella of the afternoon
We return with their children withholding the real names of their genes
In delicates we read our pages pursuing only their desire
each line of rice is a moan
Can I hide under my hats without being found?
Can they guess?
A tunic and a shield that would dodge love’s blows
There is more under the hat I swear
On the bed I assemble the puzzle of words
a white planar surface for skating in the nude black delicates without pain
and even if I say it all it would not reach your senses intact
You don’t understand You would have to learn to undress me
We leave the anthropology of a grievous colonization
a colonization close to this weak culture strong insecure exiled sex
I read the lines the editor underscores but don’t smoke
I can’t allay my anxiety and can no longer forget what I have lived
In your bathroom still linger my potions my essences my slipstream my stampede
I keep a train a calla lily a dragonfly
and the picture of my back taken while I slept
I’m not lace nor seashell nor evil
it’s not only what you see because I’ve left
My ideas are more profound than the backs you see in museums
I am my writing and what I try to hide in danger of surviving
delicates in another bathroom’s bottle another humidity so much cold
Coats don’t exist they are given away to the other woman I was in an unconnected ritual
there’s no snow in this country and even if I were to break down and eternally weep
Only in delicates do I manage to save myself
I leave my writings in your house but there’s more
more frivolous and profound more pagan
I write on mirrors and you find yourself
swimming in this false oblivion
You snooping around inside my handbag
diving into the past like a boy
You only see:
childhood photos with my mother.
SNOW IN HAVANA
I descend from the misty heavens
in white flakes of iridescent snow
JULIÁN DEL CASAL
Under the blanket the remains of my virginity shipwreck
purity and doubt
Havana dawns slightly cooler than my eyes
A snow toy for the devious girl
who goes to school disguised as the devil
You’ve left abandonment confused the city dead
I carry on in the empty streets
and no longer wait for you because it’s very late
And even though it may seem strange we are alive in the usual zoo
I’ve discovered myself anchored in the epistolary fiesta of your lies.
I recover the inspiration of my longhand and now narrate the landscape
excluding you
only in loss does one find what was hoped for
a mollusk and a slab of gannet frozen by the ice
I plunge my body into the beach’s clairvoyance
and shatter the paralysis of fear en pointe
A snow-covered pier a space flooded with doubt
I write letters in the ardor of time
and discover myself in a luminary drawing
I shatter the paralysis of my stanzas
Now I can only find you skiing
From the deep Caribbean without any news
I float on a profound misunderstanding of snow in my own city
under my own skirt
I wait for the sun since rowing is no longer possible
I cut my hands sliding on the white
A port is an exit to the world...not an ice rink
A stay dislocated in winters
A new labyrinth that I learn and forget
If I now attempt to die under the snow
Havana saves me from the void.
DÉCLASSÉE
I can’t be your equal.
My plate of food was different from the cousins’
Morphologically I sprinkle essentials like novel cocine
My adult mannerisms gave away what I would become
Alone in apartments reading while the bicycles were someone else’s
and the dolls as cold as buying oneself a child
I can’t be what you ask I wasn’t mother and father was absence
I used to belong to an unofficial world I didn’t show up in statistics or social rankings
I didn’t have a famous last name
I don’t remember a single birthday cake populated with a single candle
My mother was the diatribe between families
A rebel shield in the harmony of her archangel hands
She asked the cards which grew silent faced with estrangement
Once again they don’t let me through to the next family
Once again a woman from the outside is kept from living among so many old
people former acquaintances
Royalty is not an ideal place for this strange girl
Je suis déclassée c’est la vie
And that’s how they’ll start letting me in as they can
I defend myself and don the armor that may protect this pain
The black sheep in the concert hall populated with white animals
Don’t ask me to believe in all of you this is me
Letting in is not accepting never forget it.
