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    Comin’ From Where I’m From

    ​

    by Lydia Flores

    ​

    ​

    119 & Lexington

    corner store and PS 7

    boys on the block playing

    dominoes and seven-eleven

    wait for the crossing guard

    your ethnicity your passport

    go beyond the border

    yonder, the sea to

    where Puerto Rico

    opens its arms and

    learns to let go of its

    children too early. We

    bodies are thick with sorry.

    Central Park greenery

    tainted with that sour

    that loud—weed

    roots of my hair

     like seaweed, nappy

    and snatched back into

    a Brazilian— weave through

    bones of slavery skin

    carrying mama— whelps

    gave me something to cry for

    nights of a moon in waning gibbous

    phases of an absent father

    brown paper bagging it

    sandwich wrapped in foil

    school lunch south counter sit in

    yellow taxi cabs metered

    body heated weeping on

    the casket of Sean Bell

    ringing in my ears sirens

    of ambulances carrying

    every, body that is too mine.

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