1. El Gigante de Carolina
2. Anteayer
3. Novillero en la Tertulia
El Gigante de Carolina
I sat there- watching
as with his fingers- -he set upon
his scalp fixing his filed thumbnail
into a dorsal pole between two tight curls
until a crack a calcitic- -crack not of bone
splintering but nerve snapping
at a southbound terminal- made me
at his severed commissure -blink twice
he at the station spilled light from
the space held forth -an opened crown
and wept for some time before its arrival
the height from which he fell falls must
from the chill glim -his head gath
ering dust -and the remnant carcasses
from a colony- -stranded after winter
four strung up -from a spider s skein
black bodies- -hanged in the gas heat
beneath the radiator- where he lay
his head- no longer weeping
he gets up to nod- once in a while
though he cannot stay cannot say
the station is around him lulled -filled
around him lulled with sentient stories
when I close my eyes -I see capillaries
I see light from inside the terminal
the bus has arrived -no one notices him
but the din of life surrounds him-
someone points- -to the bus
in the glass above him -that one that one
那個 那個
let me see you let me
look at you all grown- she said to her boy
wearing a victor cruz jersey -flanked
on his right -by his much taller father
she held his cheek -warming her palm
then kisst his nose- she said to her boy
football players don t cry i ll see you soon
baby boy then she got on the bus
her laughter went off- -like a cymbal
from the priv a solitary sort
ilege shivering of laughter that woke
the sleepy imagination of the bus driver
a mother of four- -and a murmuration
floating up- -through the coach
from the back of the bus- making stops
frequently -for petty curiosities
she laughed- for the rest of the trip
in soft spasms- approaching sobs
upon arrival -I hailed a cab and asked
the driver- -if he d take me to brooklyn
kobina was his name -my man tuesday
said yea sure whereto- -asked wherethere
this doesn t never happen- -not anywhere
I decided quietly- -to peep the redheads
walking gingerly -down the rues
so many beautiful women- said kobina
before we reached the bridge before
I fell asleep dreaming of auburn
hair fallen -in the audubon ballroom
I realized -she was sobbing
Anteayer
I sat there- watching
in the backseat- the familiar ingress for
it s emenan t- all noise
coming from the brownstone
which once stood as would- -a pipe organ
loudly along the avenue- -of my boyhood
where was the radio- a way of breathing
is now a mendicant- -muttering alone
the smell of it settled -in the brick
and the paint on the crown a dull brown
pity for the sinner he said to the tune
of a rook obscured- of a robin redshifting
and the mourning dove -omnisonant
in that order- -along a black fence
I don t understand- it s simple he said
she don t live here no more she gone
just let me in just let me up
there is slowly- -pluto passing through
the lion of a dogsbody
lightening at the fore- withclosed
from some young girl moaning -out the
wide- third floor window
and as pale as the sound which is ofcome
is gone deep- over the beak of a tawny
to sleep where I ve happened to you
Novillero en la Tertulia
I sat there- watching
in tall earth while a red breast
with worm half in shadow stood idle
beneath a birch in full bloom- and why
trembling I felt my pulse- -rise
and clutch at my skinn- touch it my sing
ed neck stung under light passing
through- its black mandibles upon me
I pulled it from my neck still raging
still flailing- -at my presence
obsidian and muscular pulled so quickly
and with such alarm it must ve been
torn apart from its mandibles left pulsing
in the muscles of my throat on the paper
I threw it- toothless and on fire
before crushing it- -under my thumb
its body left a residual music -nerve
snapping its legs and antennae- -ticking
in a way I could no longer describe as
anxious maybe and- -the bird
disturbed flew away
I was left -with the boy s bleeding mouth
I was left with atonal music and
a generation with no regard
for low flight- -come screaming
across the skyline- I could see it
bleeding against pluto- -from her window
on the day -now I am here
where the purging is impersonal where
penderecki is left to play on a loop
in every languid parlor and is heaving
she no longer lives here- -and
the earth beneath me is -disquieted
shifting anxiously -when I think of her
space now occupied by a -noncenoise
child of white flight -which vacates me
trembling -and every lie that I am
trying -to explain an absence
to justify the disrepair that comes with
a decaying -memory
a sparrow fanning itself with dust
whips up a quick cloud -diffracting light
that carries increasingly diffuse
across memory lane- sitting in the park
I am left to consider apostasy
despite the man- -he would become
as a youth he was narrow wasted
word arrived that- he was hospitalized
when caught licking on the backs of wild
porcupines he jumped in -hysterics
and broke his arm- -having slipped
on an outcrop of grandiorite how
he got there is what worried me
oddly enough- -his tongue was alright
so- -he is still young
it was said- which was and is dismissive
but true -he held a seeming need
for prickly things- -he blamed himself
beneath the surface- -had no witness to
bare affirmation- that what he had
experienced and then lived through
was uncanny -became color redress
a procession of ants pass not- -pausing
to collect from the paper- -the remains
and so acknowledge- -this one of
the colony as lost a willed divestment
do they whisper- -among themselves
when carrying -the noble dead
inches beneath the surface of the earth
the largest of them carrying a sugarcube
Jun 12,
is to dream -constantly overturning
tables- -the south fate called for
carved ivory the stock against
my shoulder a moon clip in my mouth
the second hand- on the clock
ticks the way- my cock takes not more
to complaint- -in place of blood
sao paulo will keep that santurtzi may
if a black door -behind me I speak
which reward it was- the dream
dream- of the amorous
mouth to back- -turned to catch
what residual steam it is that funnels
upward from your body of its sudor
evaporates then I will not thispare
I have every- intention
free and easy for the closed mouth
of the keyed- -his scherzo
sounds in the close mouth
of the receiver- -can you tell me please
who won- -what wooden ships go sailing
who are you- -playing
I am listening now -though it is late
for these cadences -of our peregrination
Notes
Hívado (or, The Agonist), a manuscript from where these poems are taken, is a sequence I started in 2012 about Puerto Rico’s past, present, and future—and my relationship with it.
“El Gigante”: Felipe Birriel is (was 1919–1994) the eponymous giant of the Puerto Rican municipality of Carolina. He was almost 8 feet tall. But the actual giant of the poem is the little boy wearing the Victor Cruz jersey.
“Anteayer”: (before yesterday)
“Novillero en la Tertulia”: The central figure is a little known African-American poet named Ralph A. Dickey who wrote a book called “Leaving Eden” before his death by suicide (1945–1972). A portion of “Novillero” was previously published in Callaloo vol. 35, No. 3 (Summer, 2012).
Andrew E. Colarusso is the author of The Sovereign (Dalkey Archive Press, 2017) and Creance (Northwestern University Press, forthcoming 2018).