No Honey for Wild Beasts 

I’ve despised the angel in the kitchen
for as long as I can remember: her downcast
eyes, her constant yes, her slapped from side to side
cheeks, forever reddened. Yet she smiles
and swallows, with her unfailing nurturings,
bowed and crumpled under the intense heat.    

Maybe it is my cannibalistic Carib blood
pulsing timbales and congas under night palms,
syncopating against echoes from the rare Coquí.
Her honey for wild beasts doesn’t work for me.

I curved, paid the price for being bitten, grew fangs
and learned to use sharp incisors well.
I love and hate the injected toxin, try
tearing the sky, rip pre-patterned seams. I must be
poisoned and poisoner, so twisted away from her
that untwisting is not an option anymore.

I don’t really care about reasons—let others dissect.
I’ll catch that orb if I have to, break its hold.
I’ll trance, sleep with monsters, shoot down
a tunnel lined in black clouds and emerge
in flames to douse that angel.

I shun the slow sway around a fire. If doing nothing
was the doing that served Gandhi, and Rosa Parks in that bus,
it won’t do for the likes of me: these bongos stomp for justice,
the blessed/cursed twin, undulate in a rising pitch
around the loose crack of joints, eyes fixed
on all the prancing Bruja warriors
doing the dance of the ice picks.

This space between my temples affronts you.
It challenges belt buckles, and I
have been bitten, thus trained to strike at brass;
I’ve become the beak that grips.
Let’s call it a draw.

Coquí is the common name for several species of small frogs endemic to Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands. Coquís don’t have a proper tadpole stage, but rather undergo development in a terrestrial egg. Their length ranges from 15mm-80mm.

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