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Callaloo 26.1 (2003) 88


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El Malecón

Harryette Mullen

How many engineers trained to hold back a million
    gallons of ocean en el Malecón?
How many cars speeding en el Malecón?
How many couples kissing en el Malecón?
How many poor folk fishing for a living en el Malecón?
How many poot-butt buses en el Malecón?
How many hustlers hustling en el Malecón?
How many male, female, and she-male cons en el Malecón?
How many tourist taxis en el Malecón?
How many Mafia nostalgia hotels en el Malecón?
How many sexy school girls en el Malecón?
How many mermaids on shore leave en el Malecón?
How many collisions and breakdowns en el Malecón?
How many starving dogs with ribs like zylophones en el Malecón?
How many khaki cops with clean guns en el Malecón?
Vista del mar en el Malecón,
where the guard warns us to move along,
because we're black?
Because he thinks we're prostitutes? Or spies?
Because we might throw a bomb?
Just because we don't belong?
Or he's afraid we'll clone a cyclone
aquí en el Malecón?


 

From X-Tra 4.3. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Harryette Mullen is the author of six books, most recently Blues Baby (Bucknell, 2002) and Sleeping with the Dictionary (University of California, 2002), which was a National Book Award finalist. She lives in Los Angeles and teaches African American literature, American poetry, and creative writing at UCLA.

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