Poetry Sunday: My Hispanitude by Darrel Alejandro Holnes

"My Spanish is the color of rust in a sugar boiler." That line grabbed me as I was searching for a poem to feature this week. Spanish is very much a part of the culture where I live. One hears it spoken in the stores while shopping, in restaurants by the other patrons who are eating, in any place where people gather. I'm not Hispanic but it is something I find comforting and familiar. It is all a part of "Hispanitude" and it says "home" to me. I like it!

My Hispanitude

by Darrel Alejandro Holnes

I speak in the fold of the map—

creased between empire and salt.

Mother braided three names into my hair,

none of them white.

I carry a chair made of silence—

its legs, the Grito de Dolores,

its seat, a tongue bitten in school.

My voice is a garden

planted in the ruins

of a burned-down convent,

mint growing wild in the mouth of a well.

They said my Spanish was broken.

But what they heard was

Arabic echoing through stone,

a gitano’s guitar wailing in the square,

Yemayá surfacing between syllables,

the baobab tree’s roots itching for a stretch,

the duppy eating akee and saltﬁsh in my voice.

My Spanish is the color of rust in a sugar boiler.

It smells like tamarind and the sweat of mango pickers,

ginger for saril and sap from the sugarcane.

Each word I say contains another—

one for the father who kissed their child goodbye in Yoruba,

and one for the conquistador who renamed him Juan.

I showed them my skin,

called it a palimpsest.

I opened my mouth

and invented bolero with

a hundred eguns in my breath—

some who danced, some who prayed,

some who never made it off the boat.

I write with the red pen they used to grade me wrong,

and eat the drunken fruit that fell from the family tree

they said I didn’t belong to.

Only as a scar belongs to the blade.

Do not bow

to the marble statues of the crown

or kiss the cracks.

My Hispanitude is not your cathedral.

It is the shadow behind the altar, greater than the thing itself.

The laugh that survives translation.

I return to the page like a ﬁeld after ﬁre—

charred, yes, but stubborn.

Full of many seeds in my locs

that they intended to never survive,

where every rejection

birthed a refrain.

Call it exile. Call it inheritance.

Call it what remains

when nothing ﬁts

but the mouth that says it anyway

and becomes its own unplace.

Poetry Sunday: Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver

How about we share another Mary Oliver poem? After all, you can never have too many of those. In this one, the poet seems to acknowledge that it is often hard to simply live in and enjoy the moment, perhaps because we are afraid it can't last. She urges us to give in to that moment and fully experience the joy. Although "much can never be redeemed, still, life has some possibility left." Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is no...

Poetry Sunday: Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney

My mother was a farm wife and a prodigious canner. She canned fruit and vegetables from the garden, even occasionally meat. But the best thing that she canned, in my opinion, was blackberry jam. Even as I type those words my mouth waters! Of course, before she could make that jam, somebody had to pick the blackberries. And that somebody was quite often named Dorothy. I think Seamus Heaney might have spent some time among the briars plucking those delicious black fruits as well, so he would have known that "Once off the bush the fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour." They don't keep; you have to get that jam made in a hurry! Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney Late August, given heavy rain and sun For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot Among others, red, green, hard as a knot. You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust ...

Poetry Sunday: Hymn for the Hurting by Amanda Gorman

You probably remember poet Amanda Gorman from her appearance at the inauguration of President Biden. She read her poem "The Hill We Climb" on that occasion. After the senseless slaughter in Uvalde this week, she was inspired to write another poem which was published in The New York Times. It seemed perfect for the occasion and so I stole it in order to feature it here, just in case you didn't get a chance to read it in the Times . Hymn for the Hurting by Amanda Gorman Everything hurts, Our hearts shadowed and strange, Minds made muddied and mute. We carry tragedy, terrifying and true. And yet none of it is new; We knew it as home, As horror, As heritage. Even our children Cannot be children, Cannot be. Everything hurts. It’s a hard time to be alive, And even harder to stay that way. We’re burdened to live out these days, While at the same time, blessed to outlive them. This alarm is how we know We must be altered — That we must differ or die, That we must triumph or try. ...

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