2 poems by Caryl Nuñez

“Even though they have never seen me, they will remember me.

Their bodies will remember me down to the smallest structures of their flesh.

You cannot know how well people’s bodies remember their ancestors.”

Wild Seed, Octavia Butler

 

 

D A I L Y D O S E

There is a terror in my right ear.

It is the jagged, worn out rope that ties me captive.

.

Dread has made me a tired crawl space,

Not broken just yet, but wood weak.

.

There is no familiarity in this haunting.

.

You yank—

To make me swallow the needles of our last and only encounter.

The demon of unfinished business.

.

My loathing escapes in tears,

But my revulsion gets stuck

And I drown in my mouth over and over,

Enraged that my panic has relieved your hunger again.

 

P A L I M P S E S T

For a while I thought you were done for good.

You scarcely interrupted my days

And began a new habit of dearth.

.

Perhaps it was about time

To plan to meet in dreams,

Yours, mine, ours

.

I can’t tell you how often morning arrived,

Leaving me behind in the night,

waiting.

.

No one tells us enough,

sometimes it’s the ghost

who lets you go first.

 

Bio for Caryl Nuñez:

I am a queer afrodominican creative who is committed to anti-racist and anti-imperialist productions of knowledge. I am forming my own cartographies and decolonizing all the time. Currently I am a Visiting Teaching Instructor of African, African American and Diaspora Studies at Wheaton College and I am a Ph.D candidate (ABD) of Political Science and Feminist Studies at the University of Connecticut. I focus on Africana Studies, global critical race theory (legal studies), and sexuality and activism. I can be found online on Twitter @carylismagic and on soulconsciousness.tumblr.com