colonization will end—
Tempe, AZ
Virtual therapy session just ended. I look around. Neighborhood park flooded after yesterday’s downpour. Perfectly thick, green canopy, cool spring breeze protect me from worsening temperature. How does generational trauma affect you? I move from bench to swing. Seven adults play volleyball. Three others practice tricks in the skatepark. Middle-aged white man reads on a pavilion. A few men wearing neon vests and furrowed brows have a conversation. I swing back and forth into growing parabolas. Birds sing. I inch closer to sky, then retreat. I’m curious who’s behind me. I don’t turn around. Give me a specific example. Swing’s rusting metal makes a loud, cacophonous sound. My trajectory, defined by rules of physics, does not comfort me. Is everybody else roaming like this, too? A parent tries to activate water park but fails. Dog barks. Somewhere between failure and sound, I slowly fade. Movement of weightless time carries me through tunnel devoid of meaning. I question who I am and who I will become. Perfectly thick, white clouds look in disbelief. Do I seem like an echo refusing to end its parasitic existence? Without gravity’s pull, teeth fall, nails curl inward, eyelashes tether to a starless night. Crossing through geographies of despair, a shrieking hum. Choir of tender, coarse laments vibrates in my organs. Strangely familiar turbulent sky in my ribs. Storm pushing its way into my tongue. I inhale, viciously, the ripples of my mouth, porous dimension bending into quagmire. Crawling to surface I return, mercilessly true. Cruel midday sun. My hair sticking, streams of ancient emotions pooling in my collarbone. I stop swinging. I hear every cell fighting stillness’ momentum. I recall something alive. A baby cries, then laughs.
colonization will end—
Barranquitas, PR
The muddy soil shines scandalously, happily. It’s early morning. I think I am the only mammal here, but I see an ochre cat prowl in the backyard. It’s somewhat cloudy but the sun gives no fucks. I look at it and it looks at me; I lose. I walk through the green, Fania All-Stars trickling through the neighbor’s balcony, Wisin y Yandel murmuring from the other neighbor’s. Ruiseñores and reinitas whisper little nothings from their weaved balconies. In my loitering, I cry and laugh, cry and laugh, cry and laugh as if an infant creature testing them out, wondering which will give it more pleasure. Time turns into terrain. Weather into tall trees. This vegetation reef discombobulates me. I throw myself into a patch of pooled discontent. Facing the thickening sky, I dream that I can float in this fog as if an ocean. My body pure salt, buoyant, disastrously free. All around me turquoise blue, almost green, an elsewhere. An incision’s wet memory flutters into my sunburnt face. I am cut open; I am not. The torrential rain makes the walk back a tender tragedy. I cry and laugh, cry and laugh, cry and laugh. In this paradisiacal terror, I list my reasons to die. Nobody listens. Or so I thought. Thunder replies swiftly after Lightning streaks the sky gold. Shut up, Thunder. You are merely the echo of light. A barrage of insults is thrown at me. I can see the rented house in the distance. Merely the echo of light. I stop in my tracks. Am I the loud echo of my enemy’s light? I run a few feet, fall flat on my face. I am covered in mud and afraid of being someone else’s filthy shadow. A snake crawls past me. Crickets and coquíes compete for an audience. A beetle traverses my right arm. Can I simply be a part of the forest? Before I finish the thought, I know the answer. I’m belly up, laughing. I want to give up, but I can’t. I can’t stop laughing. I get up, brush off some leaves. I walk back with no notion of time. The trees whisper sweet little nothings to the bees. Maybe it’s time to shed my exoskeleton. My body, covered in grime and sweat, feels the surge of delirious mythmaking. Can I do what I must? Can I become a menace to my enemies? Can I remain a menace to my enemies? Can you?
Note: This poem is in conversation with “I Must Become a Menace to My Enemies” by June Jordan.
Nicole Arocho Hernández is the author of I Have No Ocean (Sundress Publications, 2021) and You say my country is a tax incentive (Veliz Books, 2027). Their poetry and criticism can be found or is forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, Poetry Northwest, Poets.org, The Slowdown, and elsewhere. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, they currently live in Gambier, OH, where they are a Kenyon Review Fellow. They are asking you to steadfastly commit to the end of US imperialism, including the liberation of Palestine, Cuba, and Puerto Rico.