DIMITRI REYES
PAPI PICHÓN IS ROCK DOVE
Please forgive the disrespect,
as our faces are never clean enough
for your viewing
nor can our bodies
escape your blinking.
The appreciation for the copiousness
of your coo, that consistent
traveling trill is your manifest
mastery in language through sound.
One of our many wishes as we are
but human unable to fly among you,
so you walk by us with bobbing neck
teaching a working tongue.
In what language are you speaking this time
prone en la esquina de un roca
from all over the world
statuesque in feather
bird in bird’s importance
chiseled into a forever.
For every echo between your beak
there is
an uninterpreted alphabet,
a way to read
the answers we continue searching
in the sands of your feet—
¿De dónde vienes?
¿Quién es tu creador?
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PAPI PICHÓN IMAGINES HIMSELF A MASTERPIECE
What is it to not work the fields like my people
did? How they gathered the decapitation of plants
into bushels with malicious scythes. Upon dipping
my head in a world of hay I could discover
the sun, appreciation in the artform of nourishment.
My working hands would evolve from rakes
to spoons. I would dine on four courses of picked
fruit and baked bread, know the real taste of
a simple pear and the real estate of producing
and consuming. Mostly, I envy the man who lies
exhausted under a tree waiting for his day to be
over, for he doesn’t know his own greatness like
Papi didn’t know his greatness packing linen in
a dimly lit factory. To feed on the wheats of labor
is to know something I once did in another life
time. To have eaten where I worked, laughed,
and slept is life in browned skin that attracts my
spirit’s asylum despite these softened palms. So
what am I to do when I pass a bale of dried grass
and I know I am but a hayneedle among the fodder?
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*** ** ***
PAPI PICHÓN SHADOWBOXES WITH HIS LEGACY
I’m every youth that pummels your campo’s wise guy,
calling each jab a gift to place bets and riff on the dimes
of every bird beneath me. My legacy consists of fists
clenched tight, to wallop and maim, to ball up the
shamelessness boiled into a twisted spine. Boxing,
a sacrificial sport by design, breath and wind conceived
in the sancocho brine of a Trinidad, Rosario, Camacho, Cotto,
Ortiz, Olivera, Rivera, Montañez, Torres, Vasquez, Gomez,
and you. Every one of my swings is a comida del pobre
story to swallow in this fighting game where any kid
in a high school bathroom can flap his wings, make a scene,
and throw hands against another like the generations of bodies
before him. In the cockpits of backyards, clubs, or back alleys
of clubs, they’re here, with their opponent against the ropes.
Morphed into urinal or dumpster, clobbering and swinging
until one hears that inner viejo say, hit ’em with the bolo and then,
it cuts quick like sugarcane. Through the art of a fist-to-chin
connection, I demonstrate how human can make human blood
trickle down slow, gushing aloe. Each time, swollen appendages
make mountains of blueprints with spit and bone skin graphed
on another man’s fists to be worn as a flag. In these moments,
I begin to question where those hands have been but who am I
to wait for sacks of daggers to speak a double-edged legacy
when every bob and weave comes with the wind of a whisper.
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*** ** ***
PAPI PICHÓN NAVIGATES AN EASTERLY WAVE
When hurricanes
start from a kick of dust
what does that make us
if not a God for releasing
breath escaped from our mouths
untraceable above 30 degrees
momentarily capable
of sinking whole cities
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*** ** ***
PAPI PICHÓN DANCES WITH MARIA
Make her spin with your
scratches. Continue
to hit congas at the front of
the entrance at El Coquí.
Say nightshade in her hands,
say she can provide me no aid.
In Jersey, Nueva York, Puerto
Rico— this dancer floods cities
in the threnody of her hips.
Her movements in circles
on hands and knees, men
growing and toppling
like banana trees. We dare
be caught in her eye.
To be hostage to her Juracán
sweeping fear in every man’s heart.
Let her continue to cut the air
of this dancefloor with her hips
in a whirlwind of movements
that will leave this place ravaged.
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DIMITRI REYES
Dimitri Reyes is a Boricua multidisciplinary artist, YouTuber, and educator from Newark, New Jersey. Dimitri’s book, Every First and Fifteenth (2021), is the winner of the Digging Press 2020 Chapbook Award, and some of his work has been nominated for a Pushcart and Best of the Net. You can find more of his writing in Poem-a-Day, Vinyl, Kweli, Duende, Obsidian, & Acentos. He is the Marketing & Communications Director at CavanKerry Press.
Learn more about Dimitri by visiting his website at https://www.dimitrireyespoet.com/.
To download a printable PDF version of this page, click here.
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A Dozen Nothing 