The Puerto Rican Literature Project

Papi Pichón flies out of my library 

book and no one hears him because

he chirps at spanish-to-english 

dictionary speed. Don’t dismiss Papi’s 

beautiful wings a sabre a grindstone 

attached to gold plated breasts,

a picture of many beers emptied across 

a flag on the wingspan of a flying rat. 

Sin vergüenza, he fluffs his feathers and 

juts his pecker at an unknown roost slurring,

mira! mira! I got your stereotypical Boricua 

right here! pointing to its pigeon butt.

If he had a crack it’d be the faultline where 

carpetbaggers meet the campo. The winning 

lotto ticket my grandfather never scratched 

flutters out of the same book and Papi Pichón 

gobbles it up. It’s been a long time since we’ve

seen real gold and not the deceiving foil

of a Publisher’s Clearing House sold dream.

It’s been longer since our Puerto Rico was

Borikén. Since coplas, décimas, y bombas 

fetishized Borinquén reinas and creole babies. 

Show me royalty, Father Pigeon 

before you go up in flames.

Before you are burnt ash buried underneath more 

history where the musicians and poets sit on your 

pile of dust because you can still sing louder. 

Fly me to the antiquity that collected the dusts 

of gold for your angels in Ponce harvesting coca 

to make our heartbeats beat faster than our feet

stepping to the conga in Newark. Papi Pichón 

wants me to follow him past Oscar López Rivera

during the Puerto Rican Day Parade. Before

Commonwealth and the Bronx burnings when we 

squawked like coquís. Before colorless. Before oro. 

Before our sea of tierra learned to speak Spanish.