Blood Songs and other Poems

JOELY WILLIAMS

Blood Songs

In the morning, my tía scrubs her arms raw
at the outdoor sink,
soap suds and water splashing against cracked concrete,
the mango tree shedding heavy fruit beside her.
She says it’s the heat,
but we know she’s trying to erase the brown that won’t leave her.

At abuela’s table, over plates of arroz con gandules,
we hear it again:
“Don’t marry too dark – mira esos labios thick like thieves!”
They say it sweetly,
laughing into their glasses of malta,
as if prayers for whiteness are normal things to serve with lunch.

I walk through Loíza’s narrow streets later,
the murals shouting resistance in every blistered stroke:
Bomba dancers, Black saints,
faces like my cousins’ — proud,
uncorrected.

Once, I straightened my hair for my quinceañera,
watched it steam and sizzle under the iron.
I smiled for the pictures,
my curls buried like bad news.

But my daughter —
her hair grows like wild vines,
her skin deep as roasted coffee.
When I braid it,
I whisper the names of ancestors they tried to forget.

I teach her:
our blood sings —
through hurricane and hunger,
through borders and betrayals.

It sings.
It sings.
It sings.

Beasts of the Island

The coquí sings louder than sirens,
nestled in the rusted gutters of Santurce.
At night, the city hums with soft alarms:
motorcycles tearing down the avenue,
neighbors shouting over domino games,
and somewhere, always, the thin silver cry — coquí, coquí.

Street dogs weave between traffic,
lean bodies darting past piragüeros pushing melting syrup carts,
past the boys tagging faded walls with their grandfathers’ last names.

The iguanas rule the abandoned schoolyards,
perched atop desks stripped by the sun,
tails flicking like kings fallen from broken thrones.

And los guaraguaos —
I remember sitting on the pharmacy’s crumbling steps,
watching them circle,
their shadows skating over the basketball courts where
boys too broke to dream still shot hoops until the stars burned awake.

We pretend we own the island.
We build malls where sugar once sang in the air,
boardwalks where fishermen once fixed their battered nets.
But the beasts remember.

Even now, under the new hotels, the new laws,
the old breath of the island stirs.
A wildness we cannot pave over.
A truth older than asphalt.
A kingdom of things that never needed our permission.

Storm Seasons

Once, the rains came like visitors:
gentle drummers on zinc rooftops,
scenting the air with sweet, damp earth.

Now, they come as conquerors.
Hurricane Georges in ’98,
Maria in 2017 —
names spoken like curses,
or prayers gone hoarse.

I remember taping the windows with my father,
his hands trembling not from fear, but memory –
of storms that came and went,
of leaders who never stayed to rebuild.

When the lights vanished,
we lit candles in rum bottles,
played dominos by flashlight,
listened to the transistor radio buzzing out old merengue songs.
We bathed from buckets, cooked canned beans on borrowed propane,
laughed harder than we should have –
because if we didn’t,
the grief would split us open.

After the waters recede, the new maps come.
New FEMA zones, new rules, new debts.
Colonialism wears so many faces:
now it sends blue tarps instead of soldiers.

And still,
after the floods, after the losses counted and forgotten,
the coquí sings.
Small throat against the dark,
proclaiming that survival is not obedience,
but the oldest kind of love.