Diaspora

Selected and New Poems

Varela, Frank

• Publisher: Arte Público Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781558858367
• eBook ISBN: 9781518501067
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

"Now that my past is longer than my future, / I feel a diminishment inside my body. / Like in an overcoat, my arms are lost in the vastness of its sleeves." In "Remembrance, " Frank Varela poignantly writes about the longing for loved ones—Aunt Consuelo, Doña Simona, Don Benacio—who are all spirits now. He hears them gossiping in the kitchen, sipping coffee and eating pastries. Their ghosts are a comfort, he writes, "So why then do their faces / blur in my memory?"

In this collection of 55 poems, Varela writes about growing up Puerto Rican in Brooklyn, noting that there are two types of Puerto Ricans: "those born on the island, / others like me, / the children of exiles." Pondering the universal sentiment of immigrant children, he notes that he was considered a spic in the United States and a gringo in the land of his parent's birth. "All I wanted was the impossible: / To be the who I am in a land / unafraid of the me I have become."

Like his grandfather who cleared ten acres in Cibuco, Puerto Rico, "to wrench subsistence from red clay, " Varela loves the land and what it provides. "The land is rich with decay and past seasons. / On my best days, I can reach into the soil / and marry my soul with the green world— / tarragon, escarole, lemon balm, sage." Expressing love and appreciation for his Puerto Rican family and culture, Varela's poems reflect on the universal joys and pains of everyday life. This collection contains a mix of previously published and new poems that offers a survey of the poet's work from 1988 to the present.

Bitter Coffee 2001

Book of the Living

The people living on the earth whose names have not been written in the Book of the Living will all be amazed . . .

Revelations 3:5

I

City of winter, sunset oblivion,

where the chaos of Charles Ives’ music

dissolves into the dissonance of midtown traffic.

City of the Beast, new Babylon

where tigers lurk hungry for lost souls,

distant countries. The hand records;

the mind remembers.

It’s four am. The moon’s a pale eye,

staring out from a slanted profile

in a circle of perfect astonishment.

I can’t sleep or won’t,

but what’s the difference when it’s four,

and what’s eating me won’t get settled

with more booze, sleep or sorrow.

I’m gazing at a photograph.

I hold time in my hands,

which crumbles the breakwaters

eaten by the salts of different acids.

This moment gyrates on invisible currents,

a fluid maze whose corridors merge, unmerge.

Where the dead float with open eyes,

drinking in the stars’ reflections.

Papá drills the camera with a powerful stare.

Cousin Carmen stands beside him,

reaching out for the boy riding on a broomstick horse:

Me, no more than five,

yielding to the liquid notes of her voice,

which like rippling pools of water

reflect the groves of willows,

fragrant roses and pomegranates.

She, a young exile in the city of exiles,

whom I came to love before I knew that death and betrayal

were different coins of the same currency.

And she stands beside me still,

twisting my hours into circular days,

my days into solitary weeks,

my weeks into years of solitude.

Did I tell you she had a lover?

II

City of neon lights, nameless streets,

where hell blazes in the well of an old man’s eye.

City of vacant lots, broken windows,

where the world’s poor march single file

into sweatshop furnaces, ghetto prisons.

This moment is another moment,

another time that sheds its poetry

the way a snake molts its skin,

the way parallel mirrors repeat an image to infinity,

the way I walk through time in search of something

that should’ve died years ago.

I’m subterranean, salamander blind,

groping the stair’s enfolding darkness,

where I hear voices leading to levels more subliminal,

where spirits wander the earth,

drinking the blood of rubies.

I only have language to keep me from slipping into that abyss

where unforgiving eyes stare back in fury.

A door opens; a silhouette fills the void.

I hand him the crumpled message

she wrote in the tremulous cursive of an unschooled hand.

Let me take you on another moment.

III

City of jade eyes, obsidian daggers,

where fear sequesters time, corrodes faith.

City of forgotten martyrs, neglected saints,

where timid faces stare out with Old World suspicion.

Papá’s a handsome man trapped in eternal winter.

I remember watching him shave,

the air aromatic with Old Spice,

the razor rasping stubble—

blood ticking the foamy beard,

each bubble a prism reflecting

in a young boy’s eyes.

But it’s the way he launched

his words like blunt missiles—

steel tipped, lethal: “Don’t,”

“Never,” “If I catch him . . .”

But I remember even more:

Her body doubling over in pain—

the flat of her hand shielding her face,

the razor in my papá’s fist.

It’s a Brooklyn afternoon—

Mamá’s away. Papá’s at work.

A door opens, and in that room,

the air vibrates with a flutter of wings,

a gathering of sighs, whispered words:

Me, haunted by the sight of her pale body

stretched out naked beneath his.

I’ve promised to keep their encounters a secret,

but inside voices cleave my skull

with a tempest of consonants, an ocean of vowels—

yesterday, her lover slapped me.

Let me offer a lesson in love.

IV

City of shadows, fallen angels,

where Julia de Burgos dreams

of a country without a name.

City of slanting rains, winter trees,

where Lorca writes sonnets to Caliban.

Families are like wolves.

Something primitive urges us to slaughter,

abort the unwanted,

burn witches at the stake.

Papá reads—

his work in neat stacks: Note cards, two binders,

pens and pencils, one sharpener.

Mamá sings in her kitchen.

It’s eight pm

I’m lost in the pantomime of family politics.

A key works the lock.

A rush of air troubles Papá’s papers.

I touch the bruise on my lip:

“Carmen had him in her room again.”

Life is a Cornell box filled with glass beads and razor blades.

Let me steal one final moment.

V

City of predators, side-street victims,

where junkies work back alleys

hustling for the Lady of Skulls.

City of the ninth circle, Dante’s inferno,

where cousin Carmen becomes ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Dedication
• Serpent Underfoot 1991
• Bitter Coffee 2001
• Caleb’s Exile 2007
• New Poems
• About the Author