Friday, September 24, 2010

Axis of two evils

there was a time at which it mattered and I did yearn for it, but now, I don't care.
Granta and The New Yorker will never published anything I write and it doesn't matter.
I have no ancestors that I know of who were kings, no beautiful pictures because there was no money for cameras or professional one-horse-town photographers; we had only stories to tell and our eyes as a camera.
my grandparents did not save some ceremonial robes sewn with gold thread in a rosewood box for their granddaughter to hold up in show and tell.
we are ordinary in those terms and extraordinary in ways that would not matter in certain circles; those circles full of people drooling on each other over the people with whom they are connected.
we were not connected.
we were quite disconnected i think.
we were just Black Puerto Rican warriors in a small ramshackle town, which we packed up and transported to the mainland.
someone teaches you that poverty is a crime and the solution is that evil over there that attempts to disregard you and siphon out some of your culture just for a thrill and perhaps to experience the euphoria of power over supplicants?
lostness would surely ensue and to submit at this point to another's way
to photograph life's circumlocutions . . . is impossible.

Buy my e-book! Latinalogue, Puerto Rican Nonfiction Part I

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