American Cassava

Little black boy from the waters
Whose pastimes were throwing bricks,
Shooting marbles.
He caught fish in empty chewing gum containers
Set them free again in the rain.

Black boy from the earth.
He rushes to the sea walls.
Till water rises to the rim,
He must build a higher wall again.

He went barefoot to shops to buy sunshine chips
And when no one was at the register,
He’d call out “Inside! Inside!”
Then chewed on peanut brittles,
And laughed at the way the crumbs fell.

Little black boy and his hands in the sugar jar.
He’d pick cherries and plums from the garden,
And mash them to a paste in plastic cups.
That chef of a boy,
Making American Pancakes in a South American country.
Watching American TV on Guyanese furniture.

That black boy who grew cassava in his garden,
But took a plane to the blue.
To the red sunrise of the east that makes him rise early.
He watched Oprah on an American TV.
Felt his first winter.
He called “Inside, inside” for the rest of Guyana he had left.
Till that black boy who grew cassava in his garden,
Could only buy them from a bodega

Dinner by Italy

She brought five faces to the dinner,
And turned her head towards the crowd,
Causing her collarbone to materialize into ledges.
Her ears flapped with the movement of her golden loops.
They were beautiful earrings.
Very circular, that if they fell off,
They would roll right down the ledges of her collarbone,
Onto the Marble,
And right off the veranda of Italy.
“¡Esos son hermosos aretes!” I said,
But it wasn’t Italian.
She looked at me funny.
I’d rather have dinner by New York,
And used Ms. Liberty’s torch to light the table candle.
But she loved Fettuccine Alfredo by Italy,
And the New York subway never stopped by her childhood.
“What else do you want?” I told her.
“I want all of Italy” she said, but that was too expensive.
“Why not take Burritos by Mexico, or Fried Rice by China?
Italy is too expensive”
Her chest rose to the tip of her earrings and she said
“No, I want Italy, like the Trevi Fountain,
Like the Roman Forum, as the Colosseum hides me from the sun.”
She had Italy on her face, and so
Dinner by Italy it was,
Because I wanted to live, to eat.

Sugarcane

Sugarcane is sweet,
Confused, tall, slender.
That’s just the way it grows!
He is sweet,
bitter and galling;
Confused for a fruit!
Could he be chipped to sugar.
Could he be tasted in tea.
Confused for a man.
Yet, named after it.