Brazilian American
Find me underneath a live oak tree
draped in sea-green moss as I stitch
up my skin with a Pilot gel pen and
um caderno sem pauta, where letters
are free to flirt in bold and in cursive,
where words swing off monkey bars
onto a poetic playground contained
by no line or language, like cotton
canvases fingerpainted in misty hues
of bengal blue and lavanda suave—
notice how açucar e sal sit differently
on the tongue—how português pours
out my mouth like bossa nova and
tastes like goiaba e jabuticaba
meanwhile English tap dances across
my forehead with the tang of a kiwi
or lime—and though I may fall in love
in English, eu também me apaixono
em português—eu faço amor em
português and sometimes I cry em inglês
and that’s why no breakup playlist
is complete without Anitta or Rihanna
or Bruno Mars or Maiara e Maraisa—
notice how you can usually find me
strumming my rib cage like an old guitar
either tangled up in the roots of oak trees
or dangling in the sea-green moss above,
for I am just a borrowed song suspended
between the rhythm of two tongues.… Read the rest