Get off at Cleveland Street.
You will discover a neighborhood of noise
and the music will make your hips laugh
the concrete is a pasture of broken nerves
more importantly, head towards the house whose shrouded shoulders
shiver under the ragged shawl of an amusing sky
this is 61 Ashford Street
an old woman called my grandmother
spends most summers on the front porch
if you visit when I am a little girl,
you will see me sitting next to her
in a beach chair
agitated by the humid of spirits and smoke.
She blows ghosts from her lips
fashioning cigarettes between her fingers like magic wands.
Her arms ripple like the branches of willow trees
and her hands are ancient
I have watched them break the necks of chickens
how the blood drips from her wrists like syrup
savoring the stick and moist before falling.
She is a conjured woman
and Cuba
is stubborn for her tongue
when she came here,
to this house of magic
and galaxies
I wonder if she ever longed for her country
If a Santera
ever misses her God.