Two Poems

In Which I Try To Use My Mother, Several White Men, and Two Puerto Ricans to Try to Understand “Unincorporated Territory”

To name is to make known                                         to point

is to point out  ,  as my mother would say            ,       ¡ punto,

period !                                as Hector Lavoe-Wittgenstein would

say,       everything has its end       whereof one cannot speak        though

Bad Bunny  would counter with                chambea   /           jala!

which is Marxist                 in its       simplicity of use         (value) :

What is chambered                         must be fired           therefore

to name is to                      drop the hammer on               the pin

blood (ancestry)

is a name and a bullet           which means it                    chambers

                           fires

which is to say no territory is

passed between their                             outstretched hands

but one that kills as it is released                 and the lips fall

agape      unblooded          (as by

thought)

In Which I Try to Use Naming Conventions to Try to Understand “Unincorporated Territory”

Legio (camp) becomes León (city) becomes Juan Ponce

de León (rapist)       becomes Ponce (city)

Colón (rapist) spits colonize (rape)

spites colony (body)

How the rapists name the bodies

and the bodies                  grow up

into territory

*

King David (rapist)                     so close to God

he sinned so mightily                   so mightily he sinned

He mightily forgave                     and gave

the holy world

his name

Beloved of God

my name                         my father’s name

*

At school the kids would call my father Poncé.

My cousin calls me Junior.

His soldiers call him U.S. Army Staff Sergeant.

His father is Black.

Like many American men he carries (viral) the name of his enslaver.

*

What you survive                  survives you

*

The body a catalog

each line

lashed to the shores of Spain

as portolan

*

As my grandfather is catalogued

in an urn with the USMC logo         as his father

dead by violence

in Santurce

where is he cataloged?

*

I misplaced, forgot, never knew.

I, his

namesake.

________

David M. de León is a Puerto Rican from New Jersey who struggled with the carceral system, dead end jobs, and instant ramen for many years before ending up a PhD candidate at Yale. He is published in DIAGRAM, Acentos, Fence, Rattle, 2River, Strange Horizons, Anderbo, and others, and received scholarships from Tin House and the Fine Arts Work Center. He is an actor, playwright, screenwriter, and musician, and lives in Queens, New York. davidmdeleon.com