Cape Verdean Blues
Page 1
PITT POETRY SERIES
Ed Ochester, Editor
CAPE VERDEAN BLUES
SHAUNA BARBOSA
UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH PRESS
Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa., 15260
Copyright © 2018, Shauna Barbosa
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Printed on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
ISBN 13: 978-0-8229-6521-3
ISBN 10: 0-8229-6521-6
Cover photograph: Ataraxia by Warren Keelan
Cover design by Alex Wolfe
ISBN-13: 978-0-8229-8329-3 (electronic)
For Robert Morales
I know you love me. You know I love you.
CONTENTS
Let
Strology Gemini
Small Town & Terrifying
Don’t Leave Your Smart Phone at Home
Every Year Trying to Get My Body Right
Taking Over for the ’99 and the 2000
Strology Cancer
The Genetics of Leaving
Making Sense of What We’re Made For
To the Brothers of Cesária Évora
Girl
This Won’t Make Sense in English lénsu-marra
Broke
How’s It Goin’ Down
Deniz
I’m Not Drunk; I Have Only Swallowed a Bone!
Strology Scorpio
When I Say I Want a Baby, You Say You Miss Me That Much Too
This Won’t Make Sense in English gudjadu
Self-Proclaimed Sad Boy
re the dentist and his new family
Welcome Back
Strology Virgo
Foreign Summer Remembered in Traffic
Strology Aries
Tone’s Posture
Flush Past the Ferry
Strology Sagittarius
Something African with a K
Great General of Impossible Battles
Somewhere There’s a Baby on the Line
This Won’t Make Sense in English pasada
Strology Leo
Big Sun Coming Strong through the Motel Blinds
GPS
This Won’t Make Sense in English banhâ, banhera, banhóka, banhu, banu
Strology Taurus
There’s Something So Deeply Gratifying about Welcoming Your Mother into Your Home and Offering Her a Meal as Nourishment and Thanks
And I Know That She Feels Beautiful—Do We Have Cancer
Strology Aquarius
31-Year-Old Lover
Simone
Your Eyes Blink Five-Minute Miles
Strology Pisces
You Will, Indeed, Always Be the Same Person after Vacation
After Finding a Hair in My Food at Roxbury’s First Gentrified Café
Strology Capricorn
Blossom
Not Crazy Just Afraid to Ask
Strology Libra
How to End Things Well
An Email Recovered from Trash
Self on the First Date
This Won’t Make Sense in English kanala
Liberation
Acknowledgments
LET
my father be a pregnant palm.
Or Cesária Évora’s voice
on Christmas with Sodade on her lips.
Let him be Amilcar Cabral’s fist in the air.
And the pardon for all the stints
the sun fixed on his baby girl.
Let him be an instrument
in a jazz song: trombone, bass, and snare.
The ship carrying his brothers and sisters.
If rain falls on the land he can’t live on,
let him be a wildflower there.
Be a dancer, be a volcano with good intentions.
Be thousands of drums shipped to Cape Verde.
The cell phones, the shirts, and the shoes inside.
Let the sky be my father on his knees.
Let the sun be my father.
When the blues melt the sun,
let me be the words he holds tight.
STROLOGY GEMINI
This week will be like the week your mother disappeared, and your now dead uncle taught you multiplayer solitaire. Bet the money you saved in high school that you will hear the chains falling. Break every chain, the gospel. Commit to thinking in terms outside of your bones. They move. Then they don’t. Your insides twerk, up and down, back and forth. Gemini, this week is the accent you have, but refuse to use. It’s time to move through life with your head open. Your solitude will roll down the street smoking, using language as a thing with which to shoot. Your throat will feel like a drain. Hair hugging metal. Forget about unclogging; go on with your days. Hide your face from children when crying in public. Your one good uncle will die as you dance on top a table. If you look directly into the sun, document the day anger (your mother) took your hand and did a crazy thing—held it.
SMALL TOWN & TERRIFYING
If I listen to the news tonight, I won’t come.
On mute the television anchor exchange sounds
like, Do you remember what you used to do.
Looks like, Do you remember what we did to you.
I think the lady anchor’s saying, I’m the only
taste you can describe without referring to notes,
my scent, the way home without roads. Man
anchor thinks she needs a new city dipped in holy
overcast, daily drama, and daily migraines
false remedied with vinegar, washcloth, cold water.
If I unmute, I could unfocus the idea of private
property. In Santo Antão, when a landowner’s
animal wanders into or destroys the garden
of her neighbor, the owner of the garden seeks
punishment. I await penalty on his lap.
In Boston, everybody’s plan out is to flip houses.
I’ll pay for the part of my elaborate pretending,
but there’s no faking, I prefer my eggs over easy
I just can’t make them easy for myself.
DON’T LEAVE YOUR SMART PHONE AT HOME
It had not occurred
to me to hit record
on vacation. I lugged
thirteen extra pounds
best explained as delirium.
Could not record,
the waves is technology,
is experience. My
experience did not occur.
Fury so gorgeous
I knelt on my sun &
carpet burned knees
in awe like the dream
where a guy is being stabbed.
In front of a crowd,
bearing witness.
EVERY YEAR TRYING TO GET MY BODY RIGHT
Frenchmen Street in your pickup truck with the broken rearview and the door I can’t open from inside. What’s better than New Orleans car smell, scraped toes hanging out the passenger side. I keep the window open in the event I need to summer language my mouth into prayer. A gallon of water, two crawfish sandwiches, twelve years between us. I’ve got that one good one: God is grace, God is good. Let us thank you for our food. A man I ate before you said, I’m sick and tired of you overfeeding yourself. For breakfast, I used to put my weight into scrubbing the stove. I stay lathered up. I stay far away from home. These languid seconds waiting for you to release me disguised as every year I’ve spent trying to get my body right. I’m in Brazil now, choking on humid desire, armed with another good one: What doesn’t move, flies. Amen.
TAKING OVER FOR THE ’99 & THE 2000
Embraced only by fire hydrants
our preteen lives
&nb
sp; how we knew them: the girls got boys,
the boys got money.
Peace to the faces
of boys who have now been shot dead.
Others deported to the warmer climates
of Praia, of Fogo.
Peace to the gorgeous good hair girls
now birthing boys texting boys and
phones and
de-viced or devised, we’re all online thinking,
Who the fuck can throw a better looking
baby shower than me?
Uploading took over the 2000’s
children of immigrants taking the best
parts of being unparented in Roxbury
and making them worst.
STROLOGY CANCER
Quiet the dead are these days, yeah? For the watchmaking Cancers, at the end of the month, watch her get a manicure. How her four fingers caress the back of the manicurist’s hand while her thumb is being shaped into a coffin. Count that embrace: count on your fingers, count in your head. Count eight clocks, they don’t talk back. The clocks will keep working. Cancer keep working. Keep time. Time don’t talk back. One clock says she will have your baby. Another sees you by the curtains listening to jazz in REM. The dead let light in; they use your terror. The universe wants you to stop throwing up. Three whiskeys, four hours, and later, you will find yourself over a monocle five minutes too long. For the watchmaking Cancers, at the end of the month, count eight clocks, count nine. Take a shot. With your ten fingers, tick her mouth; watch her two hands that won’t hold yours. Between the 14th and 18th, lie next to her, your lesser frame a lesson. The moon is a hammock. A hammock is a moon. Loosen up, Cancer. Lie down without moving, ask how she’s doing, and let the dead come.
THE GENETICS OF LEAVING
Inside, this vessel feels like the 1996 spelling bee when I forgot
u in language. Vovo left Fogo
to Praia. Now she has two sons named José.
Islands apart, I already jelly fished every memory that’s stuck
inside. Saltwater
nostalgia stung, rinsed right up off me.
Vovo left and came back, not recognizing my thirteen-year-old
aunt, her new haircut
resembling the first José. I contracted. I expanded.
I pushed temporary waters behind me. I already forgot
I’ve got two versions of my climb. The one I swam and, I—
I only climbed this mountain to take a picture at the top,
bell-shaped bodies all forgotten.
All this bad luck because I split a pole.
If I could open my mouth
I’d ask my grandmother why
she took so long to return to her first set of fish.
I’d ask if she’s aware she has two sons named the same.
She’s got two versions of herself,
one in the land of a free, haircut, two, me.
As soon as you start to love a city,
a thick-bodied flight attendant touches your shoulder
walking down the aisle. Thought that was affection.
I took care of that part of myself in a complicated way.
There’s only one temperature that’s good enough for a mother
to bring back the u of this vessel that is no longer the you
around my neck.
MAKING SENSE OF WHAT WE’RE MADE FOR
I like how the bottoms of my feet feel
like silence. Can you exit my whorehouse,
enter my empty? How the floor spits
gunpowder, leaving its mark on coffins.
I’ve a suspicion I was a little girl
dab in the middle of dancing, bestowing
rings and roses to mice in a crack house.
Sodade.
I hope you find you
before I do.
Sodade.
They’ve taken a beating, my feet. I know
you think pretty I’m bold, bold girls
don’t die. I smile silence, shipwreck harsh
seas. My hollers vibrate a sweet magic.
I sweat violence like ceremony. Come
closer and you can hear my legs like tires
like grief in the wings of an eagle. Closer
and
Sodade.
I made myself my mother.
Then I made myself yours.
TO THE BROTHERS OF CESÁRIA ÉVORA
I’m at the jazz bar
staring at the saxophonist
looking for the entry wound.
My curated movements
are all pretend
darkness don’t equal depth.
He’s looking for mind, too.
Me too is not the same
as hang in there. All rhythm
no blue like swinging
arms are all form of measurement.
The sax to body position, dead skin
cells to household dust
flying across the world
doesn’t compare to noticing
your only bookmark is a pair
of scissors, to cut
means leaving the big tune.
No more pretend this place
smells how it looks outside
at dawn on September’s first
fresh
turning from hopeful to who
can I talk to alive or six-feet under.
Curated sendoff,
one last wound tune
for my brothers, all colors ranging
bread, coffee, blood sausage, and
gaslight. No one wants
a black mouth brother
I know, you don’t want to be
cause it’s difficult to be
black, and
brown mouth with a hopeful open
no more pretend not knowing
that speaking Portuguese
at the traffic stop
won’t save you.
GIRL
What you went through gon’ cost you. For Sale: Body
never tampered with. For Sale: Unwanted snow blower.
Being consistently inconsistent. For Sale: Cell phone passwords.
For Sale: Not your size graduation gown never worn.
Sump pump & pipe. Those lazy expression
lovers welcomed with a yes. For Sale: Weak lovers who spit
without asking. For Sale: The ground they walk on.
A rigid plumbing tool. Flannel belonging to the photographer
met online. For Sale: The photographer’s wife’s website.
Fainting couch. Discontinued NYX,
wet n wild, Blast Off Burgundy lipstick by Posner.
The boat grandfather arrived on. The house grandfather died in.
For Sale: Artist condo to take photos of the flannel wearer.
For Sale: Galvanized mop bucket. How you show up
at the let out. For Sale: Gently used cloth diapers.
For Sale: Bad vibe seeds guaranteed to grow good.
For Sale: Certificate confirming Posedeia as sea-goddess.
Faint water pressure. For Sale:
Everything that broke you.
THIS WON’T MAKE SENSE IN ENGLISH
lénsu-marra n. scarf; headscarf
I’ve worn this wig long enough this shit is mine raise your hand if you’re too tired to wrap your real hair at night raise your hand if you feel insecure about wrapping your hair in bed with anyone for the first time I am laughing at my future Instagram captions if I burn the palo santo he gifted me will it burn the body just added to my roster
BROKE
While I study my aunt makes a few bucks with no English at the Au Bon Pain in Harvard Square. She’s sweeping like it’s a Saturday morning in her Cape Verdean home. Don’t stop until the floor’s licked clean. Make your bed like you changed your bed. Today my aunt introduces her subrinha to the other Cape Verdean workers, who, young and old, are mostly cleaning or organizing the croissants. I smile over, a free Americano. It takes courage or will or common
sense or common courtesy or respect to dare a language not your own. When they ask me how I’m doing in broken English, I hurry toward class but today my aunt has my grandmother on her phone. Pamódi, pamódi, Vovo wants to know why I don’t visit. She’s yelling at me in Kriolu and I love how it sounds to be loved so fiercely in another language. I hear words I know and ones I don’t in the voice of the only woman who braided my hair, the only woman who held my hand in her baby-soft skin. I want to ask Vovo how she’s doing, but she doesn’t know any English. Across the room, one woman mistakenly teaches another to say, I miss you, have a good day.
HOW'S IT GOIN’ DOWN
When I moaned high,
hissed, Deeper, what I meant
was, say what you remember
of your mother giving you up.
I have gossip for you
if you have gossip for me.
When I text goodnight,
I mean tell me again
the me in this bar is
worth losing sleep over.
When I tell you I’m working
on a vision
what I mean is, bless no
triggers in this family photo.
When I say I’m at a local
jazz club in awe
like the unnamed brother
in Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues”
what I mean is,
there exists no note without
my name on it. When I tell you
to put my name on it,
you do. With a song you
can’t pronounce, opaque
o, pack, unpack our scars.
We didn’t last a year.
When I tell you I want to work
things out what I mean is, I knew
a man’s body before my own.
Knew back pain before
I looked back and eyed my own.
The sax is killing it.
The sax is where it’s going down,
it’s how we hear the part, here
where it all hurts, the part when
it all hurts. I mean, the good part
of the evening. The light feels like
trick candles pleading to be relit,
the ones making themselves
wrong. Extinguished and