sueño convulso (seizure dream)

Urayoán Noel

     ^{Isabela, Puerto Rico}

where am I
           ordinary explosión
                       de las sienes
hundred temples 
                       red cerebral
                       flamboyanes
           fuegotten
                       nunca 
           dissolvidar
ever fire 
           in caos
           dos pills each morning
           tres evening dose
           for decades traga
           have swallowed peor
           con bitter orgullo pill
           leve [tiracet] am I
mulch of skyline
where am I
where’s 
           wepa in 
           epi
           lepsi
           lexi
                       con
                       o ser
to know one
self a seagull 
gab iota
never crashing 
bodymind 
buildings
melt canopy
fever sun
           febrero’s chaos
           aches sin hache
                       hacha de fuego
waking hours
                       convulsión que soy
seizure I am
walking waves 
the express
way ordinary
           I of familia 
less song
canopy & cave
                       no cabe aquí
                       mi trino
                       mi gorjeo
try no more
to fight the twitch
you are not
                       tu receta
your prescribed
prescriptive self
receipt of pharmaceuticals
you depend on
                       para sobrevivir
                       para sobrevolar
planing over 
neural sea
                       mar neural
gorge of light

                       coro (escuchando a Villano Antillano):

           seagull squawk y guaraguaos
canopy of burning green
           familia I’ve never seen
memory’s old wooden house
           seizure teoría del caos
           red walking ordinary 
expressway February
aura’s song is where the sun is
           fever dream of flamboyanes
knows no cure, no adversary

Copyright © 2024 by Urayoán Noel. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 24, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.

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about this poem

“This piece was composed by listening repeatedly to the music of Villano Antillano. The text moves freely yet uneasily between English and Spanish, as my epileptic bodymind does. I was interested in capturing neurodivergence as a dance on the page, so I used no indents for the English lines, two indents for the Spanish lines, and a single indent for the translingual ones. The piece ends with a décima, summoning Villano Antillano’s flow and seeking to compress the aural, rhythmic excess of my convulsive language. I use homographs and neologisms to defamiliarize language and bring readers closer to my bodymind.”
—Urayoán Noel

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