Pair-a-dice Cost

“My desire was to pass by no single island without taking possession of it” – Christopher Columbus

Puerto Rico, not Porto Rico
I always made sure to say the words clearly
In my best bad accent
An inner-city nuyorican approximation
Declaration of who I thought I was
Puerto Rico
In english it means rich port
And in spanish or maybe french  
los miserables
Like a play I never seen
In a language I couldn’t barely speak
Least as far as I could remember
But I’d been there at least 365 times
awakened by supernatural sunlight and roosters
On a million different glossy mañanas
That were printed on one of those brooklyn bodega cheap calendars
Your moms brought home as a $1 gift
For agreeing to agree to pay her unpaid bill
next time she came ‘round to window shop
she put it up with a tiny rusted tack in the hole that existed for that  
purpose
dead center in the kitchen directly above the sink
so you couldn’t miss it when you went to get a glass of agua
or to wash your always dirty hands
she stared at it most days and I stared at it every day
imagined I was almost there  
transfixed by its unimaginable beauty  
though I couldn’t figure out if it was a copy of a real picture  
or a copy of a painting
of a real island or an illustration of an illusion
because the palm tree looked plastic
and the bluest water I’d ever seen looked unreal
like the blue eyes that I saw on a white man on some television news show
or a picture I had seen of hawaii that was a painting and not a picture
because hawaii didn’t exist anymore either
but that calendar taught me to swim like a fish
and dive off the tallest cliffs like a smooth athlete in red speedos
and I swear it gave me the darkest tan
just like those old jibaros from the campo
that my moms said were the color of the earth
that she regularly declared she would return to one day soon
but I was already there  
splishing and splashing in the sea
counting colors on the backs of flying fish
and catching clams between my toes
like my moms said my papi used to do when he was my age
and before he went to prison
and as I got older and started reading other things
besides “Guzman’s Grocery, tenemos todo que tu necesita"
I began spouting spit balls at the white tourists
who I now imagined in the picture that might have been a painting
hiding beneath the plastic palm trees
as they tainted the colores and almost made me want to tear the calendar down  
once or twice
when moms wasn’t looking
and after my sister once said it was “tacky” anyway
and I couldn’t figure out  if she meant the calendar or the place  
which caused my moms to suck her lips, sigh
and retreat to the living room to watch her favorite mexican novelas
on our black and white tv that was imported from korea
via carlos on the corner down the block  
right next to guzman’s bodega where they had everything  
you could possibly never need

(not4)Prophet