Diaspora,

first published in AGNI 93

Simone White tells us, is of being dispersed

Dispersed is both to land and not

Being is both being and being

As once dispersed may never land nor be

The past is a foreign country in a domestic sense

The tourism board took it

They put up a fence

They sold El Yunque

It is America now

Everything is America

The only thing not America is

There is a country only my grandmother remembers

It is locked beneath her stringy curls

It sings soft and off-key while stirring the rice

The smell is sofrito but the feel is cold Schooley’s Mountain winters

The cold that bites like the neighbor’s dog

So she moved away

Inside where it’s warm

The radio plays the game

The clothesline damp in the sun

Last time I saw her she called me Tico

All she remembers is the island

Everything is the island