Frank Lima



     Oda Negra

                       To Frank Espada


My grandparents were
The bread and salt of my childhood
The rice and the rules of my life:

Dolores Diaz Flores was
The fragile lip of moonlight
With Ethiopian hair
She had black jellybean eyes
Swimming in pools of marble and blood

My father
   called her
      Ojo de Toro

And would tell the tale
Of my grandmother’s eyes

They were not human eyes
God had given her
The eyes of a bull
God created her from souls
Kicked out of heaven
And burned her skin

The universe was a giant man
Dressed in black floating in nothingness
And all the twinkling stars were sores
On his body and the sun a tiny speck
In one of the sores
And daylight came when he turned
In the darkness

           This was not true
           She was as black as a subway tunnel
           And hated the snakes in her dreams
           And hated blacks because their ancestors
           Were crocodiles

           And the Jews killed Christ in the desert
           And their first born would smell at birth
           And their mothers would lick them clean
           Because their fathers were cannibals
           Who ate the foreskins of their sons

My grandmother
Wore a butterfly
That covered her
With stars as she walked
To the stove
With its snow cap lids
On cast iron pots
A firmament of flying garlic
And ancient bay leaves
That once revived
Egyptian mummies
The odor of vegetables
Running and trying to hide
From my boiling grandmother
Walking on cinnamon sticks
And vanilla beans
Shaped like her legs
Around my grandfather
The king of heaven

The whole world was home
Cleaning and washing
Scrubbing and painting
The fading red walls
The air was upholstered
With plastic
Tropical and humid
With icy streaks of roach spray

My mother and grandmother
Went shopping everyday
For napery
Flowers
Drapes and bed linens
They were little dark women
Preparing their first party
To invite boys that were fair

They announced to everyone
In the neighborhood
          (including el bolitero–
                        the numbers man)
That Muñoz Marín
The governor of Puerto Rico
And my uncle Ernesto Juan Fonfrías
The First elected Senator of Puerto Rico
To the United States Senate
Were coming to our house for dinner

The news was as instant
As Hitler and Hirohito
Being stuffed into paper bags
And hung and burned
In their green and brown uniforms
On every lamp post
At the end of the war

The spirits vanished
When the Catholic saints were washed
And gently patted dry with new towels
And placed on linen
On a kitchen table
With sunspots of chipped enamel

     Late at night the flickering candles
     Would wake me up
     The wicks whispering to me
     Tapping on the walls to get my attention
     They were calling
     They wanted me
     The candles were red
     And shaped like women with white pin-up bodies
     Others were blue women with snakes
     Wrapped around their exaggerated torsos
     Others were red devils with
     Grinning faces clutching tridents

          The monumental votive candles
            Were filled with off-white ejaculations
              My penis was falling off by candle light
                Decapitated by the gates of heaven

Some of the candles
Were lemon yellow
Strawberry and lime
With decals depicting
The slaying of dragons by powerful
Saints with effeminate faces

        Saints only raped
          Virgins who weren’t afraid of
            Burning in hell clutching the devil
              And in the midst
                Of this glowing triforium
                  The mice spoke their own
                    Little noises to the candles
                      In this Catholic jungle
                        Of green virginity
                          And white sin

He was on his way
To East Harlem
From the country of Puerto Rico
Where shrimps lived in palm trees
The waves of the ocean were blue horse
Where the sea anemones
Went to church on Sunday

The black limo
Slowly moved up the hill
On a milky way of bottle caps
Embedded in the black pavement
The glittering necklace
Around Spanish Harlem

It just stood there bobbing and weaving
Between the waves of heat and barking dogs
Muñoz Marín
A lucent miracle
Dressed in iridescent white
Looked up from a black
Mustache that made a Spanish noise
With a life of its own

He looked like Stalin
Had Stalin been gentle

He was the prince of Puerto Rico
He was gracious and still

Muñoz Marín was uncomfortable
Among the Tigers who sailed to New York
In hordes on the oily freighter el Marin Tiger
To find their fortune growing on trees
To walk on the golden streets of New York
To become the vampires of agony with the
Chain of the future around their necks

My uncle
The great Senador
Addressed the dinner guests
Holding his hands to his chest
As Christ did
                in every room of the house

He spoke of the glories of “our language”
That bound us together for all eternity
That the words with the prefix al were Arabic
That the Spaniards were butchers and bastards
White and cruel
Living in our blood
Like the winds of Spain
We were the allegiant universe
Of the language
We should never forget

                  Who
                  Am I
                  My dark skin
                  Wondered
                  Without a name
                  To call itself



                                                                 –1997







                                        06  |  next