American Dream

poem - 2018

When I arrived, my mother shut my eyes,

And, in the middle of this east coast hunting ground,

Lay me in a bed,

Before I knew to yearn for rest,

A break from this country of cross-heirs.

I was born asleep,

Cast into lucid suburb fantasy.

In this dream,

My feet do not tread on my ancestor’s hands.

I am born with a second tongue,

which is to say a studded crown,

more royal than rural,

my bloodline more covenant than curse.

A small dog, a front lawn, and a house,

the size of two New York apartments,

All appear in a cloudy haze,

And I cannot remember where I was before now.

I can only recall the fog,

Its whiteness,  

Born from the mist after the storm.  

What is a flower that can’t remember the rain?

A child of the soil who preaches concrete.

Outside, people line the street, and I say, home:

men with gun barrel knuckles,

women with pitchforks sprouting from their necks,

children with rows of lit matches for teeth.

They’re all shouting leave, but I hear love.

Inside, I see my actual family, and I think, run.  

A woman who swears she’s my mother

reaches towards me, and sings

in a language that shatters the windows and cracks every brick.

My bones know the melody,

know the home this home was built on,

only I can’t recognize or name the Bronx here,

as if it were a color I am too evolved to perceive.

True Darwinian fashion.

Put my lineage past me:

A welfare check that’s enough

to fry spam and eggs for abuela’s children

sitting on the fire escape

imagining suburb sidewalks

full of Latinos who look just like them.

A dream is only worth the terror of waking up.

I refrain from looking at my reflection,

avoid rivers and puddles,

turn over every mirror.

What would happen if I were to know my face?