Gusano
BY LESLIE SAINZ
Gusano (n):
1. Worm
2. Slur for Cuban exiles
In need of handling.
Washrag. Rancor.
The spittle of Portuguese
on my father’s island bleat.
Abuelita, a nervous vessel. She
pats my father
against her chest like the sign
of the cross, vows to never
wear red again.
Blister. Escoria.
My father sleeps and wakes a
defector.
His father, stoic
and sharp as vetiver,
knuckles
the leather of his weather-beaten
suitcase. A year later,
Abuelito will resuscitate
his pride with a telegram
addressed to Fidel:
Feliz Cumpleaños.
I hope you never have another.
Fidel responds:
Come back to Cuba, and we’ll talk.
1959. My mother is the size
of two ripe mangoes when
she is smuggled
onto a Pan Am flight to
Jamaica.
She cries in three octaves.
Her sisters twirl the soft
bedding of her hair into
small violets, and she forgets
the sound of her mother’s voice.
Splinter.
A local priest delivers the young
girls to a monastery,
where they live and go
to school. My mother learns
the word absence and hangs it
on the roof of her mouth.
She takes her first steps into
the arms of a nun.
200 miles north, men shuffle
into lines against el paredón.
Wood is warped
to the human form. The
soil bleached as bone.
Sonnet for Ochún
BY LESLIE SAINZ
Orisha of fertility, femininity, love, and sensuality
Last Saturday, a woman asked me about the first time
my body rerouted. If I allowed it to happen, if I moaned
or covered my mouth. Yes, I said. And then again.
She wanted to know how I knew. What subdued me,
and why. I was truthful: it first appeared as a series
of pulleys along my jaw. A yellow film beneath my eyelids
before the sudden sprouting of flowers, sunflowers,
from my hips. They weren’t very tall, just enough
to press against him, leave a small imprint. Eventually,
the florets began to barter: if we shift left will you meet us there?
And he did. Like the flight pattern of vultures, unexpected
circles along the thigh, the chest, the tongue. Night, night,
day, day. We took turns trading sweet water. I puddled,
I pushed, I peacocked. My vowels long as street names.
