Sandra Santiago
Conjouring woman
Conjouring woman
is agua bendita soul,
daughter of diaspora dust,
doesn’t not blow in the wind.
She is gathered in molecules
of pressed memories,
conjoined through heart and bone.
You are white doves and black calderos
as the santos hang from her neck
Conjouring woman
moves in unlit spaces,
argues in the voices of the dead,
wanders in the company of the ancestors,
through the territory of
her name.
Conjouring woman
speaks without moving lips.
Movimiento is language.
El aire becomes a dense,
polyphonic fugue of
ancestral tableaus that trail back
through nude primeval sands,
to the African bush.
The blackness is vacant no more.
Conjouring woman
what can you do with fingertips
in the silent web-weaving of paths
for your children?
Dwelling in mythocracy,
The world of the ancients
becomes your own.
…………………………………
Ode to El Spanglish Poem
In honor of Tato Laveria and Luis Piñero
My tongue transforms
the written word
into a sword,
chopiando language,
creating interlingual innovations.
There is insufficiency in English
to describe the diasporic
condition of my soul.
My words invade el ingles,
as they become the contra
to the prejudice of thick accents
and to the racism against
mispronunciations.
My tongue tastes the words,
mixes the sounds.
Then, rolls the syllables.
The transformation has begun.
The metamorphosis of language
becomes a hybrid bridge
linking two realities that
have never been able
to fully merge.
My words become
seeds to re-propagate
our identity as Ame-Rican-os.
Not confused but enlightened.
Not fragmented but complete.
Not lost but found.
——————————————————
Immigrant Child
Here, aqui en este lugar
here in this place
my name becomes broken glass.
Syllables become shards,
unable to be picked up
by tongues that don’t care
about the fragility of respect
or self-esteem.
Here, aqui en este lugar,
here in this place
my name
gets tangled like the
knots in my rope.
The sweet sing song sounds
of my mother’s voice
when calling me
become scrapes
of a fork on a chalkboard
when the teacher
slices through
the braided tendrils
of syllables in the
gift bestowed
by legacy.
Here,Aqui en este lugar
Here in this place
I become
Es-pear-ohn-zah.
and hope means very
little anymore.
___________________________
Upon a shelf
I am no longer owner
of someone else’s name,
existing on papers that
wrapped the blandness of
my existence.
My back strains,
as I pull myself out from
boxes filled with afterthoughts.
I unpack my soul from limbo.
It is saturated in
new understandings
of old burdens.
The odor of neglect
permeates my skin.
The memories are
artifacts to be shelved
and put away.
I can always
come back to them.
But, I would rather forget
and let them collect dust.
Copyright © Sandra Santiago. All rights reserved