The Worst Year

You should have been poor, black and stupid

You should have been the monkey we saw on TV,

            dancing full of feathers in a crowded avenue.

You shouldn’t understand what we said, but you did.

            You did.

I don’t really know what we were expecting.

A maid, a nanny? A piano teacher, maybe?

You were no such thing. You couldn’t do anything.

            Cook, wash, clean, fix, teach.

You had maids and gardeners in that damned rainforest

            from where you came. You had never been in

            the forest.

You shouldn’t have been light brown and rich.

You should have been the monkey we saw on TV.

            Not this smart ape, humiliating our Aryan child,

            making us look stupid, simpletons.

  

On a day of exceptional compliance we told you that
Arbeit macht frei. It was a compliment, 
            you see?

You never complied after that. You still lived there,

            in the attic, above our heads

but only physically.

You should have been poor, black and stupid

You should have been the monkey we saw on TV

a maid, a nanny, a cook.

A simpleton. A slave.

Amnesia/Amnesty

I knew a boy once, but he disappeared

one day he was white teethed smile biting

on half a stale bread, swimsuit and bare feet,

the next he was statistic, room tidied up

by a grieving mother, his obvious absence.

Once, looking at a school picture she wished

she had given him away. That was the pain

talking. She really wished for a body

to mourn, because him being alive was so…

that hope was like anti-freeze poisoning

killing so painfully, so slowly. Merciless.

Alone at night she could almost hear his knock at the door,

the lame excuse for being almost two year late for supper.

She wished, realistically speaking,

that a bullet had gotten to him

before the blunt knife to his scalp,

the ice axe to his kneecap,

the pliers to his healthy teeth.

Angrily, she cursed his image ­

­­­– the sepia toned portrait of a tanned boy

stepping on a decrepit soccer ball–

She had taught him to lie with a smile,

keep his head low, salute and shut up.

She taught him so well! She taught him

to kiss the flag when he wanted to burn it,

to praise the president, when he wished

to be the national revolution/traitor/martyr

She cursed his name, the name she chose

for him so carefully, so lovingly.

She wished he could have been mute

or even blind to the absence of people

living without fear. Once there was a boy

in that house, but he disappeared.

Fire

I prefer the fresh wind of an open window,

a quicker end, a body to put in the coffin.

I can remember what it felt like

when the fire was eating at me,

the smell of barbecue, the fear,

the scream stuck in my throat.

I remember the anguish, but the pain?

The pain is gone. The pain is a thing of the present.

Once I felt it, but not anymore.

It is my father’s eyes I think of

when I think of the pain, looking

at me in that picture. Was I five or four?

He knew I was something else

besides dolls and church and well behaved.

Now, the years having passed

I wish I could have put this fire down

before it consumed me, but I didn’t.

It was a harmless type of warmth and I

drank it like a good cup of java,

I liked the feeling of it warming my belly,

I liked the danger of it burning my thong.

I have learned (too late) that

fire is the enemy of our gender.

It burned us once in the bonfires

It burned us twice in factories

But it burns the strongest inside.

It burn as red as rage, as hot as passion,

relentless.

The brain is really a funny thing.

I remember the bows in my hair,

the pink dress, the smell of lavender

in my wrists,  the smell of

tobacco on your fingers,

but not much more.

The brain is a really funny thing.

I can still remember the fire, the fear,

The smell of frying meat,

but I really can’t remember how

or why

I let you burn me in your pyre.

It doesn’t really matter now.  The pain is gone.

I feel only the wind in my face,

the absence of your hands in my hands,

the freedom of forgetting. 

great South-American novel

I wanna
write
the
Great
American Novel, I do,
the problem is
I am not American
I am South-American
says my skin
says my voice
says my name,
even if my name was changed for me
(or did I change it myself?),
I am still not Die-Anna,
I am Djy-Ana, Diana Leite,
not Dianne L'itchy, as the gringos say.

The aliens call me in the streets
and I never answer instinctively
as I would if my Dad called me: "Dica",
Dica da Bahia,
singing Garota de Ipanema in
Português,
tanning in the beach,
swimming like a fish,
yet
here I am
in their land,
their territory
yet here I am,
the Alien is me,
the strange Stranger estranged,
the foreigner
trying to beat the gringos
at the Gringo's Game
so I let them call me
Die-Anna, Die-Anne,
Miss L' itchy, Miss Lie-Tea,
whatever they wanna,
as long as I keep on
beating the gringos
at the Gringo's Game.

Call for rain.

Call for rain.

There

is nothing

like a desert sunset,

all tones of red, pink and

yellow, the beauty

surrounded by

dryness,

the colors

of the

wind and a

vast emptiness

on the landscape, the only

sounds being that

of snakes and

lizards.

There

is really

nothing in the

desert for me besides

dryness, now my

body and soul

yearn

for more

fertile

lands, lands

filled with the same

rich green that fills my

mind with some

sort of hopeful

memory.

a skype love story

Fred reads the poem, Diana waits.

listen to questions...

tries to understand questions...

I get it, more or less.

Fred draws...

and draws...

and then we confess our profound, creative love <3

A poem with no rhymes

Almost Dead Ancestors 

I have been the eternal promise, yet

not once was I what had been promised. First,

I was supposed to be the spawn of evil

itself. Shame, evil never really matched

my skin tone. I used to believe in things

too: tooth fairy, rabbits that lay eggs, fat man

entering my house at night all dressed in red,

but there are things not even kids should know

about. True evil, a god that kills the sons

of disbelievers. It’s in the Bible, I read

it once, it’s hard to concentrate with all

the poison dripping from the skin thin rice

paper. I’d rather have it rolled, smoked in

to fun, but I don’t want lies blemishing

my lips. Later I was supposed to be

forgotten, but I kept on showing up,

despite everyone’s contempt. Last time I was

there, a cadaver was asleep, sheets of

the purest white, they fed and sang to him.

The corpse was me, somehow. My future? My

fears wrapped in disintegrating flesh?

I was the promise of insensibility,

yet I was shaking. Once I’d known that dead

man lying on a bed. He said he hated blacks. I’m

at least café-au-lait (don’t mind the blue-

green eyes). Back then I felt so far away,

an interstate apart from him, although

he was one palm away on the church bench.

The living corpse called my name, but I

had the same love for him I have for the

first maggot yet to eat my eyes. I guess

my passport straight to hell is really already

all stamped and signed. Was I supposed to be

the devil? I saw my reflection in

the mirror: I am missing a tail and

two horns. Oh well, I’m just the promise still.