Andrés López

A Third Tongue?

How can we speak our own?

Fighting over colonized tongues

tied with twined olive branches 

or wrapped together with 

an ascot made from plantain sleeves?

I speak for the drowning brothers

stuck feet from the shores of the Malecón. 

I do not let myself sit back with an idyllic stare

or accompany it with silence. 

How can we speak our own

when brown silence is more deafening than ICE tazers?

Or the disembodied screams of agents under masks?

When is the last time your tongue, sizzled with razón, 

licked the barrel of a cop’s gun?

Willie Colón plays in my ears and The Hustler is me.

I belt like Ruiz and cover like Puente.

In an unshared language, I still hear my people –

we communicate in visions

and laugh over coffee on the tops of the Cordillera Central. 

Regardless of language,

my words will become a sword of the yucca leaf

and it will leave marks across your back in the shape of a sailboat.

And just like those before,

I will sail in dimly lit chambers

and let it stink with piss and disease

until the vejigantes roam New York 

speaking a third tongue. 

borikkken

Somos boricua, 

pero borikkken.

Brothers and Sisters sit in death camps while

our hands wrap around the neck of the coqui 

and pull it like a plantain from its sheath,

sucking the savory taste of green guts, everlasting origins,

and we dump it on the side of PR-52.

The dogs will eat its drying skin in the morning.

Somos boricua, 

pero borikkken.

Crackers will slip a finger over their lips

and blow miracle dust from Ponce to San Juan.

And while you dance, obliviously, to Bad Bunny,

they are testing our people with paper bags 

and sorting them into the janitor's closet or

the prison lunch line.

Somos boricua, 

pero borikkken.

Investment funds in Bacardi and Medalla

hold us by the balls

and your body will fall on the floor of 

the amerikkkan galleon and caravels.

They will ship us in business suits, coffee-stained bakery aprons,

or in prison garb.

A hand presses your lips to the rim of the bottle,

you drink like my uncles, father, and grandfather

at every stop.

Somos boricua, 

pero borikkken.

When 50 additional stars appear on cerro de punta,

you will smile from Mayaguez to Fajardo.

You will still be waiting for your island to red, to bake

to sink into the caribbean.

The coqui will go silent.