Brittaney Adames
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Brittaney Adames is a Dominican-American writer. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and featured in Palette Poetry, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Cosmonauts Avenue, Rust+Moth, TRACK//FOUR, and elsewhere. She is an MFA candidate in poetry at Brooklyn College.
MANGU
is a delicious component of Dominican cookery a traditional breakfast food that bleeds unto itself: pare the plantain, bring it to a gentle boil, mash it with an easy-to-grip fork with long enough tines to give it a name, then the generous slather of butter, the ¼ cup scoop of water from the pot lightly coat the oil heat it up heat it up brilliantly and then fry the salami then you make the queso frito brown it crispiness as desired the egg comes next and don’t forget the yolk should be puckering for a kiss make sure you get that molten golden center and what’s only miraculous will make its way into papi’s poached belly i don’t look at him i am scared flip the egg flip flip flip let the salami blacken y que duerma con los angelitos i like my pickled onions extra saturated some sliced avocado and bendiciones mama bendiciones papa i’m trying to remember the green-terraced home how do i possibly daughter the collision but by now i’ve added too much water too much lime i’ve shelled enough here i think the sun grazing a thousands times over letting me know i’ll die again soon
I MET JESUS IN BUSHWICK
On the modular couch, the fingers splaysagainst the curve of a collarbone, television
flickers in a measured motion. We havemiraculously invented the clatter, the
performance and the self-rule, the ghost of a pot that hasn’t hit the stove
quite yet. I wish sadness stayed inthe place you left it. How does it feel
to be big? This is not mechanical. Everygroove in this bloodless body is a syllable
to be lauded, at least once. What I mean is that even when everything’s godless the air
itself seems to take the form of something that I would know as beautiful. I like how
you say my name. Like a grievance. Like awetness that never sticks. The chickens in cages
only know deftness from a blade to the throat. Here is where we catalogue danger: the peeling
of the tooth, the stovetop kettle steaming in a way that almost feels real, the manner of half-
truths, the bed testifying to its own undoing, the gringo spitting into the dirt, the plantain
mashed by the pestle, the kiss—mi dios—the kiss, the orchids themselves making color
out of chaos. Back in the Dominican Republic, our palms greened by the crack of the limoncillo,
my father belts out into song and for a moment, I can look him in the eye again. That’s the way to do it.
To recalibrate language one has to sugar it first. To-ngue it. Let me know how it tastes, how it roves,
how it smoothes. It tastes sweet, doesn’t it? Thereckoning comes first, then. The bloodshed, then
the loving of a woman, a disappearing myth, mymother asking which man am I devouring now?
I pray the urgency makes itself known. I pray forestrange. The possibility beyond death, beyond
the ongoing body, beyond your hair wound around my finger, the intent hang of lips.
flickers in a measured motion. We havemiraculously invented the clatter, the
performance and the self-rule, the ghost of a pot that hasn’t hit the stove
quite yet. I wish sadness stayed inthe place you left it. How does it feel
to be big? This is not mechanical. Everygroove in this bloodless body is a syllable
to be lauded, at least once. What I mean is that even when everything’s godless the air
itself seems to take the form of something that I would know as beautiful. I like how
you say my name. Like a grievance. Like awetness that never sticks. The chickens in cages
only know deftness from a blade to the throat. Here is where we catalogue danger: the peeling
of the tooth, the stovetop kettle steaming in a way that almost feels real, the manner of half-
truths, the bed testifying to its own undoing, the gringo spitting into the dirt, the plantain
mashed by the pestle, the kiss—mi dios—the kiss, the orchids themselves making color
out of chaos. Back in the Dominican Republic, our palms greened by the crack of the limoncillo,
my father belts out into song and for a moment, I can look him in the eye again. That’s the way to do it.
To recalibrate language one has to sugar it first. To-ngue it. Let me know how it tastes, how it roves,
how it smoothes. It tastes sweet, doesn’t it? Thereckoning comes first, then. The bloodshed, then
the loving of a woman, a disappearing myth, mymother asking which man am I devouring now?
I pray the urgency makes itself known. I pray forestrange. The possibility beyond death, beyond
the ongoing body, beyond your hair wound around my finger, the intent hang of lips.
LA CUCARACHA
can’t walk because it’s missing its two little back legs,I’m sure of it. It creeps up the bristled arm, sighing the
fearful swell of a tickle in the armpit. It masters the stumble. Carefuls carefully. Accounts for its prey:
[e.g. the distant formality of sapphic girlhood]. Thisis the basis for the refrain. Mami giggles, sings it
again, this time faster, so that we squeeze our armpitsin bloodied anticipation, awaiting the chuck, and
we scream gleefully, we anoint the metaphor. Ifonly I can nectar the song. I know you know exactly
what I mean. Seventeen years later and I’m kissingsomeone at Henrietta Hudson, thinking I still don’t know
whose body this is, how do I even begin to silhouettethe godless wound, and my friends dilate into other
bodies, and I wonder when my next cigarette break willbe, and I do not want to continue kissing because I am
extrapolating more on this haunting. I want la cucarachato still love me. I want to be in love again. Make it
topographical. The law of divine oneness must be true,then. I translate well when my tension is stored, love-
making playful, and hands deeply consoled. Don’t ask me to tell you about myself. I can survive in spite
of it all, too. The person tells me I am cute and I smilewistfully, say I need to go, slink through the crowd,
go out to see my friends pissing in a construction cove, and suddenly it all makes sense.
fearful swell of a tickle in the armpit. It masters the stumble. Carefuls carefully. Accounts for its prey:
[e.g. the distant formality of sapphic girlhood]. Thisis the basis for the refrain. Mami giggles, sings it
again, this time faster, so that we squeeze our armpitsin bloodied anticipation, awaiting the chuck, and
we scream gleefully, we anoint the metaphor. Ifonly I can nectar the song. I know you know exactly
what I mean. Seventeen years later and I’m kissingsomeone at Henrietta Hudson, thinking I still don’t know
whose body this is, how do I even begin to silhouettethe godless wound, and my friends dilate into other
bodies, and I wonder when my next cigarette break willbe, and I do not want to continue kissing because I am
extrapolating more on this haunting. I want la cucarachato still love me. I want to be in love again. Make it
topographical. The law of divine oneness must be true,then. I translate well when my tension is stored, love-
making playful, and hands deeply consoled. Don’t ask me to tell you about myself. I can survive in spite
of it all, too. The person tells me I am cute and I smilewistfully, say I need to go, slink through the crowd,
go out to see my friends pissing in a construction cove, and suddenly it all makes sense.
