Subscribe now

The last party

is a drink for us three 
as goodbye sun lights forever fantasy 

What’s a dreamer to do 		but seek the moon beyond tomorrow’s moon?
But see a world for all its blooms	
	                           the universe and all it needs
 sure as June	
sure as the avenue 		changes its tune but never changes you

When	 I play pretend 
I see in rosary beads
and all I'd do
if I weren't steeped in all I could never amend

And how many flies in my drink died
before I could make that rhyme
   
or if I had it all I this time?
What would that mean then? 

Share

43.73

It’s true — I went to Jupiter		they smiled and asked what I was drinking 
but beautiful people turn ugly when I stop to listen

I saw the breeze from beyond the trees
catch seeds in my glass and eavesdrop with a chill in 89 degrees	

	I’ve never been a real girl	 it seems
but I dream
of 	Violet bent backwards over the grass				
spend the day in sunbeams and 		get its disease		
 float on the wing of 	double-means

I seek the world transparent!	and concede that the thing only I hear
 lives the live fantastic	          but  feels so pretend

what about the reel ever spinning in my head?       if I can't unsee the thing I dread
what enemy could lurk around every corner but
myself — 

Subscribe now

Pic of a married friend posted to Facebook in which I could see the sadness but we don’t talk anymore

In a world we didn’t leave – and I see nothing unless through the heavily beveled glass of nostalgia – you meet me on the same street – ignore the bite of the bittersweet and pocket the knife of memory – I hear a song only you would’ve thought of – and imagine one untouchable thing after another – the bride is sad – forgetting when future was all we had – I’m writing this from the place that I am – cutting the lyric into a curve – singing a melody and forgetting the words – is he man enough to remind you – not to take what the devil says you earned

“A nice girl talks to everyone.”

Twelve faces turn to face her – “Cheers” – but this instead is what she hears. She thinks about these words all night as she watches the ice melt and lets memory trickle into her bloodstream. A nice girl talks to everyone. Then there was something in her inherently broken, and that is why she was singled out. Chosen. A girl deserving.

When she was five she cried in her mother’s arms. Hid under things. She didn’t know how to tell her that she saw her as a little girl too and that everything hurt, even the beautiful things. Especially those.

She felt she was waiting for an inevitable disaster that would split her life into a before and after, not understanding that there was no such thing as a beginning, middle and end, just time unending but contained, like a page folded over and over on itself, constantly creased by patterns that preceded it. This is what she thought as she turned the cocktail napkin over and over as if looking for a sign. She had a sudden vision of herself drinking the burning candle instead of what was in her cup and her insides turning to wax.

After he saw what he saw, he dreamed of long dark tunnels and the sound of his children opening doors, running through them, and splashing down into whatever was on the other side. He dreamed of speaking in languages he never knew.

He thought himself quick but knew time was faster. He understood there were many ways in but there was only one way out. He lived a story that only should have been told to him.

His phone was ringing, ringing. Memories curled in his mind like yellowed images and evaporated as he ignored the call again and again.

Yes, he thought to himself. This is what the end of the world would sound like. It would feel like getting high, like going to sleep. Maybe what love might feel like, if he knew. Like watching the rain turn to snow and night turn to day and suddenly finding a way to undo his sins forever.

But he did what he’d do – set both eyes fixedly ahead on a single unmoving unbodied end. Some nonreal destination that could be either success or total destruction. But either way, it would be pulling him like an anchor to the bottom of that sea.

He knew that. No matter what, deep down, this is something that he knew.

“That one is truly enamored by his own misfortune,” the woman said, rolling her eyes with a delicate snort. “I mean, come on.

I am looking at the world with new eyes. One girl at the edge of the world. Lately, I’ve been forgetting _____, and I’m becoming ________. This was an exercise my therapist told me to consider, as deeply and thoroughly of course as I consider all of her advice, so I’ve completed it. This bar is hot, wood-paneled and old, but necessary in a place that shuts down all winter. Grimacing, I remember wishing to be taken out of the city and rescued into the open arms of quiet nature. As if silence hasn’t been hanging like a dome or an echo chamber repeating the past back to me.

At night there is nothing, absolutely nothing. I stare at the wall and think about how boring sobriety is. I wish for anything, everything to change yet there was nothing I could do but think. So sobriety is over. It was never anything I wanted anyway. When my therapist asked if, given there was a way without consequence, money, or impact to physical health, would I be high all the time?

Yes, I told her. Wouldn’t you? If there was a way, wouldn’t you?

With everything in the world, wouldn’t you still be wanting? Isn’t that what keeps you, too, up tossing and turning in the middle of the night?

Brooklyn, 6:54 am

Subscribe now

2 blind captains kissing in the cockpit

I saw it:		      two blind captains kissing in the cockpit 
It was never a quiet world I wanted, 	and then I got it

   Me and my shadow girl: are throwing down the gauntlet

On a sidewalk outside the Bitter End
Things change in a way I could never comprehend
      Time gives              but karma lurks around every bend

If I bought the coincidence		would it turn out the same in the end? 	
Would you say the same thing?     Would you do it again?  

All through the night 
under the guise of a lonely star
There's a side door into the dark      
and it's always left    ajar

Subscribe now

k tenga un buen día!

Igual, igual 
Pa el país tengo el portal 	

En otra vida, en otra mundo podrá ser — 
But here 		I slip a side door 
to the algo que solo yo podía ver

And trip to an edge		
	where love makes a knot 
(Uno debe amor lo más que puede before he gets got!)

But I swear I saw you en el campo 
en la jacaranda	y la Cantuta 	
en todo lo que decía la música

 From east to west		I paint the sky  in something only 
youth could possess
Dare myself   to meet the eyes of mis fantones 
	
    el mundo y todas sus mentiras 
La playita y		las cositas que repito 	
cada día		cada respira 
 
un amanecer más hermosa que sonaría

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

Galactic solitude

A song arrived from across my life 	and I heard it like I did the first time
	watched gravity tug my narcissistic skin	 
told my other self come in 		
 
Pretty twin 
what other alien 			would hear my important part of the song 
		without seeing eyes that see them wrong?
and all the dreams growing up the wall 		new skin for the disco ball 

You see
it wasn’t the party I craved at all		
what I sought in the stall            already lived within the eyewall 
	
And what about love unconditional 
		encircling the moon like a caul		is that all? 
Or is it something new			
and can it come too soon? 		
	
       I left a strand of hair on the moon	
would anyone think to photograph that too?	 
A sign of life from across the universe — was this what I was missing? 
	Is this my awaited-for sign	         from you?  

Subscribe now

Irma Fuentes, of Ramsey, New Jersey, beloved sister, mother, grandmother, and great grandmother, departed this earthly life and found the eternal rest of the Lord on Sunday, September 7, 2025.

Born May 24, 1933, Irma grew up as one of four siblings in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, and arrived in New York City as a 15-year-old with little English. Under the careful watch of the Sisters of Charity, an order of nuns who guided her way, her unflappable faith, and her determination to succeed, she created a life for herself and planted the hearty seeds of her American Dream.

Irma was a graduate of the Cathedral High School Class of 1952 and believed whole-heartedly in the power of education and the importance of hard work. She led by example, ensuring that despite any language barrier, she would graduate high school and further her education however she could, including fine arts courses at Columbia University.

She met the love of her life, Rafael, and was married in Howard Beach in 1961. They welcomed five children and dedicated each and every day to providing for them between Long Island and Puerto Rico. She believed in the goodness of people and the significance of being independent, but never forgot her origins, regularly sending photos back to her family on the island, each one a snapshot of a rare and beautiful woman unafraid of the world in spite of all its obstacles — a woman who, all in all, achieved precisely what she set out to.

She joins in heaven her beloved husband, Rafael Fuentes-Melendez; her mother, Venancia Montalvo, of whom she was the proudest daughter; her sister, Arminda Acevedo; and her brother, Angel Bonilla.

Irma is survived by her children, Brunilda Capozello (Daniel), Noemi Villani (Vincent), Clarissa Fay (Matthew), Gidget Nelson (Steve), and Alfie Fuentes (Laura); her grandchildren, Elisa, Anthony, Nicolas (Marisol), Joseph (Marissa), Julianna Franklin (Angus), Angelina (Keeler), Dylan (Katie), Natalia, Miranda, Lucas, and Oliver; her great grandchildren, Eva, Vincent, Meadow, and Viviana; her brother, Luis Cuesta; and many cousins, nieces, and nephews. They will carry on her legacy of strength, love, and togetherness. In her last moments, she reminded her descendants to “always stick together.” She was proud of them. They were her reason for it all.

She will be remembered in every moment where she is not, her values embodied by the family she leaves behind.

….

From “Desiderata,” which hung prominently in her home, and whose truths lived innately in the great woman we lost:

“And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.”

Howard Beach

I see you    on the side of every seashore  
   everywhere you are not 

the end has no end    

I watch you clean the clock
and rewrite time     

each second like lightning 
on an empty beach.          You swam out to
an endless sea     on a quiet night
in the best ending I could never write 

     It rains 
       but now      I see
love perennial like the passing of time  
like the grass      each blade a reason to try 
  life through the eyes of a little girl
     
The day has come,

and yes. It is still a beautiful world. 

Subscribe now

This article comes with a companion playlist, which can be listened to in any order. All songs on this list were coded into my Tumblr homepage.

Subscribe now

I, like most girls my age, had a Tumblr. More than one actually — at one point I did indeed have a dedicated One Direction blog and I’m not ashamed to say it. Us fangirls were busy back then.

It’s difficult to remember how exactly my obsession with Tumblr developed, but eventually I was scheduling hourly posts to my blog for the days I’d be away from my laptop. And these weren’t any original posts — just reposts that fit my aesthetic. No photos of me, and rarely ones that I’d taken myself of something #clean or #grunge or whatever theme it was that I was going for at that time. My blog was entirely, completely, fully inconsequential, and my posting — or not — made no difference to anyone’s life but mine.

But it all meant something great to me. That was when the future felt as exciting and dangerous and vast as the internet itself. I can credit Tumblr with so many of my musical influences: Lana Del Rey, the 1975, Sky Ferreira, Marina and the Diamonds, The Strokes.

I started seeing the beauty in everything: the lights on the highway, shadows against pavement, my parents together in the front seats of the car. Sunsets, sunrises. Timing the right song to play at the right time as the bus drove me to pre-sunrise band practice and I saw the scattered lights of the businesses below streaming past like shooting stars and knew they were mine, and that I saw them even if no one else did. And they moved me. Every morning. Those minutes between school and my house, my little self shooting through the night imagining the endlessness of possibility and the rush that that feeling gave me.

Tumblr gave me something creative to focus on, a collage of feelings, stupid grainy photos of hands; of a bicycle leaned up against a French restaurant; the silhouette of Lana Del Rey against a neon light; a screengrab from Fight Club of the blimp that said THE WORLD IS YOURS; anyone and everyone and everywhere I was not.

I didn’t know how lovely I was back then. There was a whirlpool in my chest and I was diving into it searching for something. That me was fixated on predicting possible heartbreaks and channeling whatever I thought that might mean for my art. Maybe manifesting what I thought was beautiful back then, because I thought feeling pain might make more sense.

It’s been more than 10 years now since I graduated high school, which means the me I’m referring to here is even older than that. That me was a flightless bird, rushing to unravel every mystery of life and finding only myself in every reflection and on every street corner. You can go anywhere in the world and there you’ll be. What did I think I’d find?

Since then I’ve been avoiding these very songs because of what they hold, still no closer to discovering what any of the feelings they reveal mean.

When I started this blog I wished I had my Tumblr to go back on and reference, to copy the code and continue what I’d started all those years ago. But I’ve never been able to log in again, nor remember what my URL even would be. I’m sure by now it would be a broken page, or reclaimed by a new Tumblr user. But I’d like to imagine little me is still reblogging her aesthetic photos and checking her homepage to make sure the songs are playing right. In a purple room with posters on the wall. It gives me something to dream about. And for a minute it gets easier to pretend like all that time hasn’t really passed at all.

This might be the closest I get to writing a letter to my younger self. I hope she reads it.

Subscribe now

All summer long they’d be talking about it. It was the summer of death and dying. Things were changing all over the place — properties being sold, people moving out of state, a sense of departure and deep, hot rot. Grief had taken all the color out of my August. Life was happening all around in pointless and mundane ways while I coached myself out of thinking.

One morning Carl came running back to the house around 6 o’clock and I knew something must have happened by his pace. The marine layer hung low like a heavy blanket and by the time he reached the top of the wooden stairs he barely had breath left in him.

“Guess what washed up on the beach last night,” he said, exhaling through his words.

I stopped the faucet and put my palms flat against the countertop. “Ten million dollars worth of cocaine.”

“No.” His eyes glistened with something I then could not name. “A whale.”

“A whale?”

“Yes.”

“Alive?”

“Of course not,” he said harshly. Then softening — “No, it washed up because it died, like. Probably due to an injury of some kind, a boat or another fish out there got it.”

I felt a deep stir of discomfort behind my heart, as if a machine long dormant had finally whirred its way back to life, and looked down at my two hands. “That’s so sad. I wonder what happened.”

“I know,” Carl said. He looked out the window at the shoreline, from here visible the piping plovers that dotted the water’s edge. He had on a pair of short running shorts and a t-shirt from a Greece trip a few years ago. He looked small in the perspective of the horizon, shapeless and vague in the fog and din. Like he could be anybody.

“You know what I noticed?” I said to break up the harshness of the silence, to stop my mind from asking how long whale calves can survive without their mothers. “There’s no deer here.”

“What?”

“Remember in Fire Island? That one night, those deer?”

Even from feet behind him, before the words leave my mouth and settle like dust, I knew I’d fucked up. The tension descended from his jaw down to his toes like a mist. If I were anyone else I may not have noticed these plates shifting into place. He wasn’t facing me but I knew his eyes would be deep and dark like an animals’. And that if I approached him, even in the slightest, he’d reach back with the speed of a cobra and make me forget what I was trying to say.

“You said we’d never talk about that.”

Last summer, when Carl was still sick, they’d been taken in by a couple on Fire Island that had more rooms than friends, and they lucked out enough to spend the summer for free so long as they’d take care of the sprawling home and gardens. No matter what goodness came their way, Carl’s addiction managed to squander it. He was born into privilege and I always resented him for it. But last summer, when he was still sick, I’d find him down by the water’s edge at odd hours of the night, numbering the stars, the fish, the leaves on a tree, fearful that he’d lose count and have to start again. Every night, leading him back up the wooden stairs, out of the sticky night. So many things had happened that summer, most of which we had both vowed to forget. But how can you erase a memory? How can you undo what can never be undone?

On the night that everything happened, I came face to face with a white-tailed fawn. I said, “How did you get here?” and it cocked its head as if it was me that should be answering the question. For a moment, I felt the world suspended in its perfection, crystallized in the orbs of the eyes of this child animal. My heart lurched into my throat as I reached out, inexplicably, and then withdrew, seeing movement in the trees. “I thought you were alone.”

For days and weeks afterward it would not be the tragedy I remembered, nor his last words nor anything at all, only this moment, those two black eyes and within them every reality I could never know. I hear the sound of hooves on wet earth and the harshness of reality pulling that old me to shreds when I try to remember what happened after that.

“It’s just something I noticed.” Now my words come out smeared and smothered. In Carl’s face the past replays in flashes like through a viewfinder. Like it was yesterday, I can still see his red mouth forming the words — I didn’t know it was laced. Eyes flickering like a dying flame.

. . .

That night I lay awake until it was very late. My chest stirred with a heavy undertow. Every sound was loud to me, the crickets, the passing cars, the sound of Carl’s breath. All of it like a cosmic taunt. I stepped outside and quietly closed the front door, holding my breath and edging along the tree line like a spy. Like a thief I stole to the end of the street, across the walkway, and onto the sand. It was barely dark with the moonrise. But I needed to see the whale.

Subscribe now

It’s about Georgie

The worst one is the first one.

Her words echoed through the telephone like the two were girls again, speaking through tin cans in the woods.

How do you know for sure?

It was May. Spring heaved and hid, bringing muddy skies in the morning and brief moments of patronizing stubborn light when no one was looking out the window to enjoy it in the afternoon. All the typical start of season joys appeared washed out like old shiplap sunk to the bottom of the bay. Even the church bells hovering on the breeze sounded more like a badly pieced together memory than any song.

There was a list of things needing to be done before the weekend — as the mayor’s wife every Memorial Day was more important than the preceding. Last year the committee had managed to book some new popular band all the kids liked, and had thousands of attendees spending their money (all tax deductible) in the name of fundraising for the island. The year before, they chose a retro theme and had a vintage car show in their mile-long driveway, old school carnival rides and treats down the lawn, and Donny Osmond himself flown in from Vegas to perform a pre-fireworks show, all hosted on the sprawling Hanson property that spread like manifest destiny out to the horizon and dropped off hard into the dunes below.

Last night Cora dreamed she was trying to climb up the side of the dune with two wet hands clutching a ceramic punch bowl while Georgie and all her guests watched from above, laughing. But then the juice was intestines and she was sliding farther and farther away from the wretched party and into the sea. When she woke, she of course was alone — Georgie had taken no time at all in packing up his pressed shirts, topsiders, and hats, and was happily bobbing in his boat on the bay, steps from here, but miles from her.

If you ask Georgie, he’d likely say it was his choice. They grew apart. They changed. They had new, different interests. They had different friends. New desires. New ambitions. Everything was new, except for her. That was the problem — somehow, between every Memorial Day and Labor Day, from Halloween to Easter, anniversary and birthday alike, from every cloth napkin laid and centerpiece built and invitation sealed painstakingly with wax, every sparkling lemon-scented countertop and man cave renovation and salon blowout — all of it be damned. She could never be new. She could never do life again. In the waiting room of the plastic surgeon’s office on Fifth Avenue, she watched a 16-year-old wearing a rhinoplasty splint from behind a flimsy brochure on laser hair removal and cried to herself.

……………………………………………………

Emily was right when she said the worst of it would be the first time she saw him again. She had stopped down at Cassidy’s to inquire about the prospective catches for the weekend — she had a grand idea to serve full roasted fish to coincide with the Mediterranean theme of the party, which now seemed stupid and corny and out of place and incredibly too much money and work and who would even be deboning all of these fish and why were we having a Mediterranean party for an American holiday, just cancel the whole thing why don’t you — when she heard his voice and a jolt went through her like she’d touched a live wire. It had only been a matter of days since the incident that resulted in the police knocking on their door at four in the morning but they had each lived lifetimes since then.

It’s about Georgie, Cora had said when Emily picked up the phone that night.

Where is he?

He’s in the back of a police car. In the driveway.

Did they say what happened?

They won’t. I think he made them promise.

Emily sniffed and sighed. What are you going to do?

What can I do?

The night buzzed around them like the wings of a hummingbird. Cora’s heart pushed on her esophagus and she swallowed into the phone.

Can you take him tonight?

I can’t, Cora.

Please.

He’ll dry out by tomorrow.

It’s not just that.

Then what?

Cora felt the phone in her fingertips, the glass slick with sweat against her cheek, her feet in her shoes flat on the earth. I meant I don’t think it’s just that easy.

Of course it isn’t.

The darkness gummed up the scene like molasses. In an hour’s time the lawn might be dappled with morning light, the colors of another day hurting the bruised hearts of the weary. But now, the only visibility came from the squad car, stuttering as the officer crossed its path to approach the Hansons’ front door. He took his hat off like he was a soldier preparing to deliver news to a widow that her lover had been blown to bits in some faraway land. But worse — her lover was someone she could never reach, here or not.

Cora?

Yeah?

I think we should handle this in the morning.

It is morning. Cora smiled weakly into the phone. Thanks for picking up though. Cora looked up at the approaching man, young enough to be her son. How humiliating.

Good morning missus Hanson ma’am. Cora surveyed the academy-fresh plebe stuck with the graveyard shift. She knew Alan was happily in his bed, likely fermenting, while his new charges handled the only real crimebusting of their little town: keeping its mayor alive.

Hi, officer. Can we maybe just —

Yes ma’am. He walked around the side of the patrol car and unlocked the door. Georgie, who was up against the window until now, came out onto the gravel like a dead body.

Cory.

Hi, George. Her voice was tinny and wrong. Can you get yourself inside or do I need to wake one of the boys?

At their mention, George put both feet on the ground and heaved himself up to his full height. Sloshed, sweaty, and smelly, but still gorgeous Georgie. No. Don’t wake them.

I turned the lights off around the corner ma’am I didn’t want to cause any disturbance with the kids tonight.

Thank you, officer.

Georgie put two large hands in front of his face and walked toward her like a zombie. You know you did this, right?

What?

The officer looked between man and wife. An owl hooted in the trees.

Ma’am, is there anything more I can help you with tonight? I know you have quite the busy week with all the festivities. Me myself, me and my brothers, we used to love coming down for the chowderfest, you know, that was one of our favorites. And that one year with the —

Yes, it’s going to be quite fun, Cora interjected. The young officer shut his mouth with a snap, blushing. I think we’re just fine here. Good night.

Yes ma’am. My apologies. I will see you.

He held her gaze for a moment longer, and within it, a silent covenant to keep the night’s occurrences between themselves. He nodded curtly and pulled away from the property, into a dawn cut only by the soft beam of his headlights.

Cora stepped to the end of her property line, staring out at the long stretch of road connecting her to the rest of that grayscale world. The sun was rising like a pitiful white orb over all the wicked and the damned. Georgie must have already been inside when he broke the night air in a voice clear as ice.

You know, I used to be someone else. Before I met you.

The words fell on Cora like hailstones. She turned around. What did you just say?

But he was gone. The night was gone and those words, when recalled, were more like a dream than any memory. It was late into the morning when Cora awoke again and had no recollection of those words ever being said. When she saw Georgie at the fish market days later, she said nothing. Neither did he. He called her once, but let it ring just twice before changing his mind. Noncommittal as he ever was. Cora had watched the screen go from alive to dead and for a moment didn’t recognize herself in its dark reflection.

Phantasmagoria

There is no vague nightmare
first the screw    then the unscrew

I wanted to write this before I told it you

and try the words to see how they'd taste:
haste
space
deep
a dream 
is a door     revolving around the universe      not a black hole
is a spider      not a synapse
which plays for keeps
      which trusts no one

and reminds me of losing
or finding something unknown
a sanctum door sewn then unsewn

a mannequin of sorrow       slow membrane of mirth 
moving    ever toward tomorrow's earth

like the pendulum   collecting what it deserves  
                    which does not want
    which waits for nothing
which always returns. 

Subscribe now

bear with me?

Subscribe now

what i’m listening to

But I Can’t Help It (Hayien) — Spotify | Apple
Summer Forever (Addison Rae) — Spotify | Apple
IDCIYDC (The Dead Bolts) — Spotify | Apple | YouTube
Early Morning Rain (Cleve Francis) — Spotify | Apple | Bandcamp
I Don’t Believe It (A Beacon School) — Spotify | Apple | Bandcamp
I Only Feel Love When It’s Missing (Small Forward) — Spotify | Apple | YouTube
Out of My Mind (PROM) — Spotify | Apple | Soundcloud
Hot Fun (The Hellp) — Spotify | Apple | Soundcloud
Taken for a Fool (The Strokes) — Spotify | Apple | YouTube

what i’m reading

The White Album by Joan Didion (a birthday gift from my friend Olivia)

When You See My Mother, Ask Her to Dance by Joan Baez (audiobook, read by Joan)

add me on Goodreads and Storygraph so we can have a #bookworm #summer

what i’m writing

Strangely, waiting around for a fiction book to materialize in my brain with a perfect plot and dynamic characters has not worked. My dad said Stephen King just starts writing sometimes and lets his characters decide so… let’s try it.

            On the seventh day of rain in a row, the rusty boat whirred to life again, as it would tomorrow. You are in that boat, as you were yesterday. Beneath you the metal whale swims up, down, up. Water, air, water. Life, death, life again. 

No one had asked it of you. Because it wasn't ever a question. All winter your father stood at the bay window staring into a gray mastless and massless world, lips moving wordlessly. Until March, when he and the crocuses would crawl from their shells with life in their limbs and almost from nowhere declare, “It’s time.” 
 
There is no real season for clamming anymore, you'll find out when you helm the ship yourself decades later. Not with these mild winters. Today the morning is hazy and timid. The bay is soundless. The seagrass shuffles across the surface of the water and it sounds like a phantom child’s secret carried on duckback.  

Back before there were roads on this island, your father caught the largest striped bass in 1958 during a 57-day fishing derby and won himself a Ford Skyliner with a retractable hard top. And you were there, too; 12 years old, weighing in with the 19” striper, and taking home a bicycle. A winning son born to a winning father. 

Back before there were this many people on this island, your family was something important.  At night when yellow squares glowed from beyond the dunes, and only the most distant clatter of silverware could be heard, it was your father’s fish that sated the bellies, that made it so the island slept silently, like a switch going off, on, off again. Life continued, life tripped over itself to test how fast it ran, who could get there first. 

But no longer. That was the time of forever summer. You went days, weeks without needing to locate a pair of shoes; you went months without needing to call on visitors, because they were always around. Your family home, always teeming with people; whether they were asleep on a floor, a couch, or a deck mattered little, because tomorrow, there would be another dawn to awake for, another reason to sleep now. Another everything tomorrow. 

You lived for those days, waking up with the heat before the sun even appeared, skin pink like a baby from yesterday. Proof that you were there, too. Being alive in the world that early made you feel unstoppable, like you were less of a kid and more of a critical player in the unbreakable chain of this island. If you and dad had a particularly good morning, you’d be back in dock by 2:00, and on the beach by 3, toes scraping the bottom of the sea floor as you caught your breath between waves. Falling asleep in the sun. Thinking little of anything. Just the water, drinking you. 

Life was easy when you were that boy. You wonder now whether you romanticize even that, forgetting the lack of sleep, your father’s fury on a bad day, the dollar bills counted singularly in the green dark of the kitchen late at night. Rich indeed, then not. 

But the world itself was different when you were young. These waters, this bay, don’t recognize you anymore. And your family…was nothing you could get into now. 

Now, it was clams. Clams, as many as possible, for the markets and the restaurants that still cared about fresh caught. Before the sun comes up to burn your veil away, but never disturb the loop, never break the chain. 

A heron dips its long beak into the glass of the bay. Life, death, life again. The fog like the breath of the water, hiding you from the world. And the world from you. As the night lifts, the bay reflecting the sky, you recite the words. Again, again. 

the baggage claim

My therapist said to see the thoughts like bumblebees
or a baggage claim

I see clinging to the smears of each passing car 
every drop of rain
and think about before

The devil told me the last thing I need is another metaphor

But I stare into the abyss and it swore
If you need to spread the word, tell the bees

I ask my crustacean memory
what about the me that never gets free
crying through a song I asked for
 scared I’m cursed
	what about the me that’s the worst

Because I’ve been here before	
seen the shoulder of every road	 
and don’t think I’d have done it right      even on a second go  

So I live the night as I write it
let it beneath my skin	like a virus
venom from a sting I feel but never see 
	that phantom reality 		still a revelation to me
 

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

Read more

Subscribe now

But first, a poem.

"Personal History" by Naomi Ayala
published in In Motion Magazine, January 31, 1999

When your history gets too big
to keep fitting in the wagon
you've been pulling all your life
your sleep is thin as water
you zigzag up hills
rely on a ladder to climb into your hammock
flush the toilet with a stick
pick tomatoes with a long steel hook
open beans up with a knife
cut the flowers in your garden with your pride.
 
There is no Spring like another Spring,
no lover like another come before,
and dreams, they all have a familiar sound
like a song on the radio,
a new pair of shoes,
a phone call in the middle of the night
 
When your history gets too big
to keep fitting in the wagon
you've been pulling all your life
you leave your keys
where you meant never to go back,
remember what you wanted to forget --
a stranger on the street
selling songs for a dime,
like you his face, his eyes,
his song, his story --
 
because you are kin with all things now:
the man you kicked into the wall,
the car you crashed,
the food you cannot eat,
the whisper of countries
that open before you in the street,
the mechanical laughter behind the prime
time of your day, somebody else's dreams.
When your history gets that big
you walk backwards as you pull,
run after things that fall out on the street
forget exactly what it is you carry
in that wagon but live your life
as if you knew, always looking
for the sides of things that slope
down smoothly from a straight line across,
the memory that fits
so easily in your pocket.

“I should have taken more pictures.” So titles Bad Bunny’s sixth and most recent album. I was not at all prepared for how emotionally moved I would be by this seemingly danceable reggaeton album done by a sensitive albeit goofy character of Bad Bunny. What I got was much, much more than a listening experience, and it has been on my mind for days.

“I should have taken more pictures when I had you / I should have given you more kisses and hugs when I could” — his words are then echoed back by a chorus of voices in a way that immediately emotionally translated the rest of the album. For me, I understood. It made me think of an entire generation of migrants who left their lives behind for their kids. For their kid’s kids. For me. Yelling into the abyss of the record with anguish and regret.

In the second verse of the title track, Benito says he’ll be with grandpa all day playing dominoes. I feel a grandpa-sized weight on my heart. He is a man I only know through the pictures, in the kitchen, in the living room, holding my cousins.

Through my mom’s stories I envision her life under the humid hum of a forever summer, voices and music deep into the night — just one more for me. Should we put coffee on? You can’t be leaving yet. Have you eaten?

To see life as a celebration — that being together was enough — I roll the thought over and over in my mind as the subway squeaks like a coquí. They never had money. But the island, the people, were so rich. It was not about money. It was about life, about living now, tonight, this music, this dance, what could be better than that? Music in the house, music in the street. Food for everyone. My house is your house. Where you will sleep tonight matters little because we are together and that is enough. I will see you tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that.

I know that these recollections, too, are fleeting. The crushing reality is that many will never get back there, and when they do, it is not the same. It could never be. The selflessness to give up all they had ever known just to trust that they would make it — that they had to. They did.

In my grandmother’s apartment, I find photos stuffed in every corner of her tiny apartment and always covering the fridge, flipping them over so she can read her own handwriting. Those photos are her proof. Before she was here, she was that girl. I write for her.

Now, I live in Brooklyn — actually, just off the Avenue of Puerto Rico. Red, white, and blue flags are still stuck in the trees from last summer’s parade. When it’s warm, if I hold my breath just right, I can hear the click-clack of dominoes down on the street below, and a deep laugh that comes from a different kind of island. I take a picture of the skyline to send home.

Revisiting a poem I wrote a while back. My grandmother is the one taking this photo. One of the men pictured here worked at a candy factory that was just out of view in the frame. At night, he would sweep the factory floor and bring glass shards of sugar home for the children. She is filled with joy to tell me this story.

The candy man

Out past the frame where the sky is all sand
a man stands in a palace built with hands

and when moon comes low
frogs echo a song only the land understands
he spins sweet strands of hair and stirs a deep memory pot

with blood thick as air
the children sleep with feet bare
and all through humid night
the tired man recites things he couldn't bring himself to write

let your solace be your self-command
make this land your birthright

years later the one behind the camera
takes me in her hands and almost entranced demands
this is why I spent all that time in prayer
it was for you, you understand?

now the words fill her eyes like morning dew
spill out like season’s violets in a forever June

and when it rains       
she folds herself away beneath the moon
talks to the night and
prays she’ll wake amongst the dunes

lain in tall sugar mounds like sand
I want to ask her about the candy man
how life sifts through our hands
so she can’t think of that violence      just the sweetness of our silence

            how she sighs when reaches for my side
 like she can’t believe the blood in her veins
somehow made it into mine.

Surface tension

Somewhere tonight
they build the plane important enough
 for a nosedive		

We ride the beaten side 		
               the canyon looms as
Mom ignores the news

and in the ballroom of my eye 		a little me waves back at you

a willing mind		too frail find
somewhere out there tonigh    is blind
	
               in the garden	sublime 	           a figure lurks in the blue
	I chance a step toward her		

or is that person you?

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

He opens the door with a halfway-buttoned shirt, halfway-shaved face, leather loafers, and a slightly frazzled grin, but welcomes me in right away into exactly what one would expect Art Garfunkel’s apartment to look like. Stacks of books, demos, and records find homes beneath spindly-legged furniture. A large canvas decorated in colored signatures reads love from West Choir! and we heart Art.

Quipping about a recent trip to Switzerland, Art Garfunkel, now 77, makes only tiny, pointed movements paired with long and superfluous monologue. The wisps of his curls are visible on either side of his head, poking through the lenses of thick glasses. Looking out the window, he sighs and says, “I shouldn’t have come back to New York. I don’t want to see anyone.”

Read more