Afroantillano Ghost Story

        after Terrance Hayes

Calling all ectoafrocaribbeans,        all disembodied afroboricuas,to rematerialize        to the colorblind,show them even our ghosts            still be prieto.In Pittsburgh,        the prospective PhD studentfrom UPR says race isn't a big deal                in Puerto Rico.We don't see        white kids            and black kidswe're all just        Puerto Rican.            I don't respond.Just listen to the way            my bones rattlein the winter wind        and isn't thisthe perfect setting        for a ghost story?On the way home I listen                to "Si Dios fuera negro"                to "El negro bembón"                to "Babaila"                to "Bandoleros"                to "Loíza."                to the breath                        of every fantasma        slapping me in the face                    with this frost. Years later I am on the island            for the first time.As I walk past El Morro,        Raquel tells me the slave tradedidn't actually end here in 1817.              Speaks of slaves smuggled infor decades to follow. I'm not at all                  surprised. Maybe evenknew this already. Have been marked black          marked contraband          marked anything butboricua and known the rattling of chains                    as prelude to a rattlingof bones. Isn't this the perfect setting                    for a ghost story?The night is dark, though it isn't stormy.I guess the waves        crashing behind us will suffice.Hasn't the air always been heavy              with every fantasmakilled by this city's walls?That is the only kind of ghost            storyI have ever known.I wish there were moreabout negritos who died        on sugar plantations        on coffee plantations,dark-skinned spirits        haunting consumers                of their products    throughout the Western world.I wish there were stories        of negritos who died                on ships destined for Puerto Rico        and now capsize every cruise shipclose enough to a shore                they never reached.                    Instead I'm left with a chorus                of skeletons.So adiós mi gente. Adiós mi pueblo.Adiós        (adiós                adiós                      adiós)                              Borinquen queridaand hello        to this humiditythat has swallowed            every fantasmathe myth of progress            has failed                to exorcise.Let me be inexplicable as a spiritshuffling the bones of the living.