The Talking Coconut

Ed Morales

Sunset at Luquillo wetlands
Brings the biting flies
As night sky caresses
The murmuring sand

El coco que habla
Me preguntó, cowrie eyes smiled
About the twilight Idlewild
Donde llegó mi papá

He said he was Elegguá
But was wise to front Changó
At parties, in the bodega
Where he had to let go

And declaim the colonial critique
Of privatized electric chic
The long hours spent sweating
The centuries of remembering

Surplus avionetas in northward flow
Slow danced mainland passage
Loss of original language
Nostrand is no place to go

When the jíbaro dance
In the Caborrojeño
Spelled the death of the docile
Somnambulant bugaloo

The coco could only
Speak in tongues freely
The babble of the balneario
Espíritu of the coíony

The décima ringing
Spirit called Lavoe
Alchemical singing
Breaking bad flow

Changó outside,
Elegguá down low
The crossed flag of Lares
Always lets you know

Copyright © 2024 by Ed Morales. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 10, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.

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about this poem

“The title of the poem is a reference to Jorge Brandon, who is generally acknowledged as an elder of Nuyorican Poetry. ‘El Coco que habla’ was a nickname he used. The poem starts with a reminiscence of a walk I took along Luquillo Beach in Puerto Rico while I was listening to the live stream of professor Juan Flores’s memorial service in 2014. Coconuts and cowrie shells are used in Afro-Caribbean religions, often in altars. Other lines refer to the Puerto Rican migration to the U.S. and the shift from bugaloo to salsa in the 1970s. The refrain of ‘Changó outside / Elegguá down low’ came to me when wondering what my Orisha, or guiding spirit, would be in Yoruba religion.”
—Ed Morales

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