Incunabula in Puerto Rico

It is hard to say where things start and end.

If you ask Google when the recession ended, it will tell you June 2009.

When I ask myself at what point I drifted.

Out from a loving place I find myself pacing.

Until my back hits the bars of a cradle.

My cradle was a large mattress.

Rays cascading through.

The slatted windows.

The frothy trail behind a ship is a wake.

Spearing through the ocean.

My mother was awake.

Certain hours of the night.

Making sure I was still breathing.

Next to her I feel spine-full.

My father’s mother called me.

Tormenta fuerza.

Hurricane season starts.

The first day of June.

I was born ten.

Years before the recession.

Ended before it started too.

Where does a circle bend.

Towards me to heave me into its orbit.

Where does it break.

As a child.

A sense of justice.

I nearly drowned.

In Puerto Rico my mother dove.

Her wristwatch.

Ticking in the water.

So loud the tidepools shook.

I remember the salt flats.

Algae and shrimp made them.

Pink against sulfur in the air and the lovers.

Carvings at the top of the bird watching tower.

How did we get here.

Ambling and frenzied.

How the word focus.

Is a fireplace.

Becomes the palace fire.

If you light a match in the cradle.

You can see the words hooking.

Onto each other until their spines are.

Bent some obscure glyphic thing.

Paloma Saint-Denis Lopez is a poet from Puerto Rico and Brooklyn.