short lines of Hemingway

thick paragraphs of Faulkner

labarynthine Kafka

and the absurdity of Godot

Eliot’s pastoral

Woolf’s bite

and Kincaid’s critique

Brontë, Austen, and Dickens

Angelou, Morrison, Erdrich, and Diaz

unparalleled lines, and rhythms

pull me back to the page

Leon Bridges sings “take me to your river, I wanna go…”

their words are worlds

I dive into

let them sting, scathe, or scald

let them soothe and sing

there is truth in fiction

revelation, revelation, revelation

is upon me through the word

their words are worlds

I dive into

…take me to your river, I wanna go

my brother-in-law says, I only read non-fiction

as though fiction was a lesser thing

as though proclaiming it a virtue

but history is in the eyes of the historian

and where has the true reporter ever been found?

ask my ancestors eradicated on an island

help me Isabel Allende, Julia de Burgos,

Sandra Cisneros

patronas de la escritura,

ayúdenme a dar voz a este momento

como mis ancestros al Grito de Lares

Yo misma escribo mi historia

we are diáspora but we are not dissipated

one drop unites us

guantanamera, güajira guantanamera…

take me to your river, I wanna go