Adrian Castro

HONEYMOON IN CHINA
-for Siu

She might've loved the island
after all
she wore her white uniform of love
the first & last time
thereshe
wore her white uniform a long way for the honeymoon
China can be far from El Barrio Chino
Beijing with its big wall of incense &qi
Shaolin temples
herbalists with prescriptions from previous dynasties
martial artists who
dedicated their lives to singing
the body divine
were not bereft of expression
yet

They went to China on a honeymoon
but displays of gunpowder
the blood running forming puddles
on dirt roadsides
soon kept them in the largest of prisons
And after 63 years
several children
after much sorrow & laughter
exile & remembering
she would never see la bodega en El Barrio Chino
where she opened a door
to another home
where she met her destiny
to another life

MISSING ANGELS

When they descended on waxed wings
on our white, our red, brown
on our elevated wingsis
it possible they stole you from
when they ruilled the myriad brushes
that paint our landscape
painted on rhythmic pulse of travel-
Is it possible to wash blood off skin
& flowers off skin

The memory of you my brother
paving the stone trail with soft music
a wandering tumble down our veins
a shift in atlas
the quest for the perennial record
the memory of you
still
archival
like the fact everyone is first from somewhere else

Remember we too migrated-
we once left our signatures on the sand
& on night
sliding through our fingers
like hourglass
And the memory of you
swearing an oath on a steel spike
then offering it deep to the earth & ocean
dead fish looking on

We promised we would not end like the others
forgetful of breeze
the smooth Caribbean relax
of conversation
the humanity of doing nothing

Soon you'll have to answer to the sand you swore
& the steel you swore
because it's possible they've hidden you
buried the script of you
the arching target of history: Yet
blood reaches home soon
Sand will eventually turn to bone
Wind will feel its flesh
Steel will give it body

& there is still music
more music
memorized in stone

ONE IRONY OF THE CARIBBEAN

It is common knowledge:
these waters witnessed the meet between East &West

Those sullen sailors rancid with chorizo
talcumed with salt &sea breeze
old gunpowder
the perennial scent of Spain flapping
among the crested flags
the debauched night of laud
the Moorish cumin
the Gypsy's dervish

But Tainos had mango o guanabana
to hoist as flag
perhaps a carey & tabaco leaf as insignia
They used planks from siguaraya
o quiebra hacha
pine or cedar
(that perfumed at the same time)
while sailing to the Areyto plaza
And the Caribs
well they used bones with hatchet scars
for mere decoration
in effect a floating coffin

The triangle that ensnared freedom
corralled continents into a trinity of suffering
the ships which chiseled these shores
in effect floating coffins

They departed from these islands
in rafts at best
hammered & fastened from rafters

from dangling colonial homes
in Regla, Cojimar, Marianao,
Jacmel Cap-Haitien
the same homes built
by survivors of floating coffins
They built them
with the same wood that bolted their ancestors' chains
The same wood glued with sugarcane sap
They used strewn army canvases for sails
the sails that pivoted
often in the wrong direction
A rudder fashioned from a shovel
stained with the earth of a dead man
They launched it to sea
to begin anew
but in effect a floating coffin

A long time ago
they didn't bury the dead
till the eyes were pecked by a mysterious bird
delivered to the heavens
so the eyes could oversee the body's proper burial
It was then that
they buried the body
in a hollowed trunk of siguaraya,
quiebra hacha, pine, or cedar
sometimes ceiba for chiefs &priests
They launched it to sea to reach home to
reunite with the others
they lauched it to sea
to begin anew
in effect a floating coffin

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©2007 by Adrian Castro