My loss I call "isla"

​Rinconcito

 is a special little corner in Somos en escrito for short writings: a single poem, a short story, a memoir, flash fiction, and the like.

Benediction: Three Poems

By Eric Morales-Franceschini

Isla ​

My loss I call “isla” 
my teacher, too 
for to fall prey to it 
is to forfeit every right to grow old with the devil 
And say, yes, this is what it is to be sated with life  

But woe to this trigueño body and to 
every hymn 
that conjures a love lost on nearby shores, borne on tempestuous waters 

for memory holds at this and every other lonely hour 
—innocent of all history 
bound to a desire more fecund than Atabey, 
less merciful than Juracán 

for it defies all names and, thereby, all tenability 
walks across warm sand, 
a mother’s smile, 
and a century 
older than blood the scent of rum  

nor does it know any end, sees only the color flamboyán 
and blossoms every nightfall, as does the coquí’s coy song    

if only I knew other names   
—less sublime 
indeed: less generic 
to keep at bay this perversely welcomed hour 

If only I had the decency to say no 
and heed to a reality as dry as bone 

If only, that is, the Virgen would make me righteous 
just this once
and let me say, with impunity: I miss you

Benediction   ​

The tongue is a peculiar and amnesiac foil 
which forgets that not all is bound by the color spic 

for flesh and its miscellanea do speak loudly

but a logic older than the corpus knows that 
even the ventriloquist is no rival 
for the criterion of the “native” 

who, after all, could afford to loiter about in editorial time
or seek asylum in the quintessential and the vulgar
when all must be said here and now    

inevitably a stutter confesses, “I’m a fraud” 
and you are laid bare to a world 
that knows 
not 
how to listen for a new canto  

either belatedly, or hastily
we fall prey to a grammar older than coarse mahogany 
and a fetish that cast spells as earnestly as does a cliff’s edge   

but this lengua I embody naively believes  
that forgiveness is imminent 
in every breath that whispers, “La bendición…”  

A dissident etymology ​

there are dialects  
that conjure wounds deeper than the Sargasso Sea 
and its cryptic waters 

for words are an index 
in which every last breath can echo a biblical curse
or hail a tree’s limb 

yet horizons come alive anew 
in dissident etymologies      
that speak their endearments in black 

black is that enigma, after all, by which our beloved are beckoned, 
and a quiet audacity held dear  

for words are an index, too 
in which every last breath can whisper a secret   
or hail 
a boricua’s kiss 

Eric Morales-Franceschini was born in Humacao, Puerto Rico and raised in southern Florida. Eric is a former day laborer and US Army veteran who now holds a PhD in Rhetoric from UC, Berkeley and is Assistant Professor of English and Latin American Studies at the University of Georgia.  He writes and teaches in the fields of decolonial studies, Caribbean literature, Cuban cinema, and liberation thought in the Américas and is at work on a scholarly manuscript, Epic Quintessence: the mambí and the mythopoetics of Cuba Libre, and a prose and poetry manuscript titled Post Festum. "Isla," "Benediction," and "A dissident etymology" are his first published poems.

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