Three matches lit one by one in the night
The first to see your face in its entirety
...
They say,
between black and white there is gray in choices
perhaps brown or mulatto or mestizo in people
...
Why not
eliminate the outsiders?
and get this country
back the way it used to be?
...
I like being angry.
I like the wolf rasping at my larynx
the way she snarls and snaps at the back of my throat.
I may mute and muzzle her
...
If the world were a crosswalk
two straight white lines
telling us
to live our lives
...
Let's find who to blame:
Ulrica scorned by Cedric,
Pandora and her thrice-cursed box.
...
You sank me down
in muds of treachery
like quicksand
clawing at my soul.
...
I am beige
but I would have you paint me colored.
Like the sun, brown my hot skin
mahogany; like the wind, wind red-gold twists
...
I used to wring out sheets with
you
grasping one end tightly and
I the other, and I
...
I am
at heart
a saltwater creature
No crystal brooks or placid streams
...
Like daylight
I fall straight and true
but like twilight I
am caught between evening
...
If I had
but one gospel to leave you,
my dear ones, my daughters, o my beautiful ones,
it would not be the morals of shame sin or religion
...
The Dunce -Translation
He says no with his head
but he says yes with his heart
he says yes to what he likes
he says no to his teacher
he stands
is questioned
and all the problems are posed
suddenly crazy laughter takes him
and he erases it all
the numbers and the words
the dates and the nouns
the sentences and the traps
and despite the master's threats
under the jeers of the prodigy children
with chalk of every color
on the blackboard of misery
he draws the face of joy