Trademarks

The embargo split us before our parents were born
on opposite sides of a missile crisis. His grandfather lost English
on the way to Havana. I picked up Spanish, but it falls
under pressure. At the table after the lunch table
he finds a bed at the bottom of a beer bottle and runs from it
back to the family reunion: our grandparents were cousins
now they are dead
conversations that can't be reintroduced
because the translator is in the bathroom
or walking back
or far enough to see our native tongues are not indigenous
to our bodies, they are proofs of purchase replicating
on autopilot, auction-block fugitives pledging allegiance
to the branding iron, they are African voice boxes
crushed into blood diamonds bought and sold
on the black market. No matter how far from the plantation
my cousin and I still aren't free. We can't even speak
without a master of both present
to translate our trademarks.



Reprinted from Skip Tracer (Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2024) with the permission of the poet. All rights.