cinquains written during a tropical storm

to live / now is to speak / the
language of the tree / toppled
along the expressway / at night

perhaps / to walk the streets / that
you have always walked / until tire
dust gets distilled in / your lungs

and turns / to ashes of / infinite
radiance / that connect you to
ancestors / twice dead 

their hands / oceans as gray / as
fallen yagrumos / except the
flowers in their eyes / still bloom

let your / words improvise /
stories, bodies, forms and /
habitable words the size of /marks on

pages / provisional / these
diacritics of / our deepest solitude
become / slow fire  

since we / are being born / a
thousand times a day / in the
hands of each being that / embraced

us from / its makeshift bed /
murmuring something like / the
wisdom of a planet as / it burns 

the carved / wood of the dream /
and its antipodes / this song of
fluorocarbons and / roosters 

nature’s / border regions / the
stone sternum of night / or the
blaze of the collective / neuron

currents / that come and go / the
light goes on and off / the
neighbors writhe while carrying / what looks   

to be / sediment of / civilizations
like / ours that survive in the
warble / of birds

ancient / dinosaurs nest / in digital
gardens / with no trace other than
the sea / turtle’s

smile as / reflected in / the
turbulent waters / signifying foam
or the drool / that drips

from my / universe to / yours,
ambient, amber / necklace of
archipelagos / broken 

after / the last downpour / the
prolepsis of song / with no
safeguards other than the / curtains

that still / cover the doors / that
lead to balconies / from which you
can see port cities / larger

than the / world, smaller than / the
dewdrops of your breath / where
all possible ships anchor / away

Copyright © 2023 by Urayoán Noel. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on January 2, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“Written in my native Puerto Rico in the summer of 2022, this poem attempts an eco-poetic reflection on islandness through a surrealist formalism, and is part of a longer work in conversation with a range of poets from the Caribbean and its diasporas (e.g., Aimé Césaire, Julia de Burgos, Frankétienne, Victor Hernández Cruz, Kamau Brathwaite, Nicole Cecilia Delgado, Soleida Ríos, Édouard Glissant, Pedro Pietri, etc.). With its slashes and minimal punctuation, the poem seeks to turn the syllabic form of the cinquain (2-4-6-8-2) into an oceanic vernacular attuned to archipelagos of breath.”
—Urayoán Noel