The Poet X – WINNER OF THE CILIP CARNEGIE MEDAL 2019. Элизабет Асеведо

       “You Don’t Have to Do Anything You Don’t Want to Do.”

       What I Say to Ms. Galiano After She Passes Me a Kleenex

       Going Home

       Aman, Twin, and Caridad

       Divine Intervention

       Homecoming

       My Mother and I

       Stronger

       Slam Prep

       Ms. Galiano Explains the Five Rules of Slam:

       Xiomara’s Secret Rules of Slam:

       The Poetry Club’s Real Rules of Slam:

       Poetic Justice

       The Afternoon of the Slam

       At the New York Citywide Slam

       Celebrate with Me

       Assignment 5—First and Final Draft

       Acknowledgments

PART I

       In the Beginning Was the Word

       Friday, August 24

Stoop-Sitting

      The summer is made for stoop-sitting

      and since it’s the last week before school starts,

      Harlem is opening its eyes to September.

      I scope out this block I’ve always called home.

      Watch the old church ladies, chancletas flapping

      against the pavement, their mouths letting loose a train

      of island Spanish as they spread he said, she said.

      Peep Papote from down the block

      as he opens the fire hydrant

      so the little kids have a sprinkler to run through.

      Listen to honking cabs with bachata blaring

      from their open windows

      compete with basketballs echoing from the Little Park.

      Laugh at the viejos—my father not included—

      finishing their dominoes tournament with hard slaps

      and yells of “Capicu!”

      Shake my head as even the drug dealers posted up

      near the building smile more in the summer, their hard scowls

      softening into glue-eyed stares in the direction

      of the girls in summer dresses and short shorts:

      “Ayo, Xiomara, you need to start wearing dresses like that!”

      “Shit, you’d be wifed up before going back to school.”

      “Especially knowing you church girls are all freaks.”

      But I ignore their taunts, enjoy this last bit of freedom,

      and wait for the long shadows to tell me

      when Mami is almost home from work,

      when it’s time to sneak upstairs.

Unhide-able

      I am unhide-able.

      Taller than even my father, with what Mami has always said

      was “a little too much body for such a young girl.”

      I am the baby fat that settled into D-cups and swinging hips

      so that the boys who called me a whale in middle school

      now ask me to send them pictures of myself in a thong.

      The other girls call me conceited. Ho. Thot. Fast.

      When your body takes up more room than your voice

      you are always the target of well-aimed rumors,

      which is why I let my knuckles talk for me.

      Which is why I learned to shrug when my name was replaced by insults.

      I’ve forced my skin just as thick as I am.

Mira, Muchacha

      Is Mami’s favorite way to start a sentence

      and I know I’ve already done something wrong

      when she hits me with: “Look, girl . . .”

      This time it’s “Mira, muchacha, Marina from across the street

      told me you were on the stoop again talking to los vendedores.”

      Like usual, I bite my tongue and don’t correct her,

      because I hadn’t been talking to the drug dealers;

      they’d been talking to me. But she says she doesn’t

      want any conversation between me and those boys,

      or any boys at all, and she better not hear about me hanging out

      like a wet shirt on a clothesline just waiting to be worn

      or she would go ahead and be the one to wring my neck.

      “Oíste?” she asks, but walks away before I can answer.

      Sometimes I want to tell her, the only person in this house

      who isn’t heard is me.

Names

      I’m the only one in the family

      without a biblical name.

      Shit, Xiomara isn’t even Dominican.

      I know, because I Googled it.

      It means: One who is ready for war.

      And truth be told, that description is about right

      because I even tried to come into the world

      in a fighting stance: feet first.

      Had to be cut out of Mami

      after she’d given birth

      to my twin brother, Xavier, just fine.

      And my name labors out of some people’s mouths

      in that same awkward and painful way.

      Until I have to slowly say:

      See-oh-MAH-ruh.

      I’ve learned not to flinch the first day of school

      as teachers get stuck stupid trying to figure it out.

      Mami