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.