Julio Bonilla’s Reviews > 250 Poems: A Portable Anthology > Status Update

Now I realize there is nothing
more personal than speech,
that I don’t have to defend
how I speak, how any person,
black, white, chooses to speak.
Let us speak. Let us talk
with the sounds of our mothers
and fathers still reverberating
in our minds, wherever our mothers or fathers come from:
Arkansas, release, Alabama,
Brazil, Aruba, Arizona.
👨🏿👲🏿🧕🏼

My father calls a day
too late, merely to remind
me that once again
I've forgotten my mother's

birthday, never mind his,
which is a month earlier,
and which I have also
forgotten. He lowers

his voice so that he can
tell me that he will call
my mother and....

The counter girls laugh.
I concentrate.
It is the crucial point-
they are ready for the cheese:
my fingers shake as I tear off slices
toss them on the burgers/fries done/dump/
refill buckets/burgers ready/flip into buns/
beat that melting cheese/wrap burgers in plastic/
...

I was born blind she said, an act of nature.
Sure, I thought, like birds born
without wings, trees without roots.
I didn't understand. The day she moved
I saw the world clearly; the sky
backed away from me like a departing father.
I sat under the jacaranda, catching

This is the story
of a beautiful
lie, what slips
through my fingers,
your fingers. It's winter,
It's far

in the lifespan
of man.
Bareheaded, in a soiled
shirt,
speechless, my friend
is making

A campesino looked at the air
And told me:
With hurricanes it's not the wind
or the noise of the water:
I'll tell you, he said:
It's the mangoes, avocados
Green plantains and bananas
Flying into town like projectiles.

The only legend I have ever loved is
The story of a daughter lost in hell.
And found and rescued there.
Love and blackmail are the gist of it.
Ceres and Persephone the names.
And the best thing about the legend is
I can enter it anywhere. And have.
As a child in exile in
A city of frogs and strange consonants,
I read it first and at first I was
An exiled child in the crackling dust of
The underworld....

Every day our bodies separate,
explode torn and dazed.
not understanding how we celebrate