Adrian Castro

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 oEtravel-
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

VEVE/FIRMA

Someone
(they can be dressed in white linen) goes
gets into the head of rhythm
spills lime chalk in small curls & arrows
chalk we call ~fun
cascarilla tambien
spills it for specific purposewe
call this veve
firma tam bien
tambien gando

In order to summon Loa
Orisha maybe
maybe Nganga
the signature must seem like mirror
visual dance at the door to the earth
like a replay of the past
conflict & tears
immigrant who first
steps on foreign soil acting
alone
opening a path through el monte
The one who arrives with red eyes
machete y marfwo
smithies courage
then slices bits to his children

The signature must seem like
mirror like iron thread
from this world to
that world

THE SOUND OF ONE IMMIGRANT CLAPPING
-----after CzeslawMilosz

Let's say he actually
did not
arrive on a boatthat
the relentless colonel
never found his subtle throat hidden
under the trance of the clave
or thunder hands that spoke
repiques of those crimes
Let's say he went to Nueva York
on the assumption
Mario Bauza
Machito or
Tito (Rodriguez or Puente)
could make his legs & hips move
in a constellation of joy
Let's say he merely
tried
to hear the echo of his arms
flapping through a factory
like a red rag fastened to that fan
Let's say the cold
often froze his vowels
tan Caribefia
tan resbalosa y mermelada-
Could the immigrant even
mute the melody of his tongue--
They say it is silence
that makes music
But this will be like
drumming
on a distant tuft of cloud like
the colonel cutting the sound he never found
But it takes years of forgetting
for a stranger
to breathe the saltwater
or glance at a pile of stones
&say
I arrived through this portal
This is now my home. . .

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©2007 by Adrian Castro