Isa Anastasia Rivas

Angel of Dust

a child kisses the surge

of sunlight through open curtains

thinking:

¿Qué cuerpos flotan en las palabras?

Can my body float?

silence

the child watches specks of angel 

drift 

between their fingers

toward ray and glass filament

the afternoon was yesterday, today, again tomorrow

vast, and fractional, before math

the angel spreads its wings in loose verse

to whisper decay

nature is concrete, the folding window gate,

la paloma que espera on the fire escape

hungry with flight

Papi’s Sketches

after Jesus Colon

1.

in nightly haze summer winter spring fall

Pá would sketch the stories of his childhood

searching for response

"I don't have any friends.

They died. Cuando era joven, and then later, too.

Drogas. Alcohol. Accidentes. Todos.

There was a boy. Best friend. In El Bronx.

We used to play stick ball. You know what stick ball is?

And we were playing in the street, porque

where else? And ALL the children

were playing and running and yelling.

A truck appeared, de repente, y BAM it hit

Joel y lo aplastó. And I saw it.

His head pasó por debajo del wheel y vi todo!

His eye...!"

2. 

There are no immortal words

none

one can walk hours in the silence of themselves

and find only the vibrations spilling in from the street

as a child, when I closed my eyes,

among the sirens, I could still see a beach

and a tide the eye scans 

each roaring wave with a shattering of shells

dreaming

Papi found a street where it rains eyes

and tears the tierra the asphalt

the sidewalk and hollers up

the bones

for an unfinished

game of stickball

this is all a dreaming

3. 

"Did I tell you about my other friend, Joey?

We did stupid shit when we were young.

We would run up and down the block,

climbing fences into yardas, climb up to the roof,

janguear por un tiempito, maybe jump

from roofo a roofo, but

he wanted more.

One day, on his birthday, him and the guys

went to the roof of the proyectos,

and found where the elevators

go up and down.

You wouldn't catch me dead doing that shit!

But Joey y someone else, I don't remember,

climbed onto the top of the elevator cars

and began jumping back and forth

until BAM Joey tripped and estaba pinchado

between the two cars, died right there.

His family was right downstairs."

4. 

the beach became S 3rd St.

with waves of pigeons and bullets

the shape of angels

with cats screeching poems made of nightmares

and trampled stars that left behind no dust

or imprint or music

Papi dreamt of elevator doors

with voices stuck behind them

5. 

"Mira, remember the story about Joey?

Yeah, you remember. 

¿recuerdas la parte where I said

we just jumped roofo a roofo?

Si, well I tell you why I stopped

doing that crazy shit. It was with Joey, maybe a few weeks

before él murió. We were jumping, flying

over the alley. We all used to do it.

And there was one roof with a BIG jump.

I was scared, but all the guys kept pushing me to do it,

so I did it. 

And as I was flying my feet landed right on the edge,

y estaba en pánico, like the wind was pushing me down

or some crazy shit like that.

I leaned all the way back, but then someone,

maybe Joey, caught me and pulled me back. I almost died.

Never did that again, después de eso." 

6. 

I think we dream at the edge of a precipice

made of bones teeth y impoverishment

an edge of the side of a building

leading down straight into the sea

where rats are drowning

and at the bottom is coral

the shape of iguanas hungry for meat

or limb or tin or eyes

and beneath that more falling

into an inherited aloneness que sabe na' de la vida

but swallows it whole in a traumatic chord

I never asked my father why he ever told me those stories