Las Palmas, In a House No Longer There, and

Las Palmas, In a House No Longer There, and: Shores of Appearance's Gown Keith Jones (bio) Las Palmas, In a House No Longer There the central strategy of the system is the colonization of desire. —Sylvia Wynter ________ dis appearing island I stole my babies replanted themin me to garner this body without chains wild where some new something is where somenew venue is I kept fortresses in angles in bodyclocks in midafternoonsky horizontal where I dreamt of you "Que Dios te bendiga" ________ evicted myselfwho I was grew thickdissolving boundary'sstrata & all alarmindigo's treatise taught mehow to insist a body as a homeof being [End Page 103] ________ I who I is in passing swept granule ofsugarcane & mangothe dream you held"first holy communion"the dresses insideis whiteningone for your fourblessings abuela, you who were oncedaughter un nationedwalked with at all hours ofskyward afterlife ofedges pressed & lacedin transit ________ on stairs I recompense notknowingyou in what language do I say pretend? in what language do I say wherewerewe& whoare Imean howareyou here mami? tías y tíos y how many arrivals of errant eyes& wombs if origin then water were the tearsof my birth [End Page 104] ________ opaquely gleaned the wash to story a mirroring"I'd like to return her whole this way" however un done the screamor bloodied expel de lay de tour the child dis comfited you who were once blond& made to be your person whittled intoa tiny box avowed & ripped from island lightland not land but whisper ________ continent they dangled fromyou saw your body whithertipped in brine & root cropthe 1980s were lavish crueljunta death old colonysky fugitive ocean fugitivethe moon in place as placemythed her mother's milkinto origins lost at churchSunday's school of arrowswe who were englished ingrammars & metaphors hijawilled her gift dis islanded r [End Page 105] ipped root torn continuumswas breach was covenant unwieldy in their fray the newscoveredup as woman as childas daughter was gash of lightwas broken limb was motherlove planted in silence para mi madre, mi tía, mis hermanas, y mi abuela [End Page 106] Shores of Appearance's Gown after for with Wangechi Mutu 1 etched breachbeyond dis cordantic gownthousand timesliquid 2 bird-skein penumbrawings stretchedriveringly like limbsin flux 3 sharp etymologyruin's mirageI carry phenomena insidethe opening 4 in scissor in split-infinitiveplacesbeneath resemblancebreathe 5 break shores of historiesof others beside wherewe once werehad coiled us [End Page 107] 6 we who were un namedun made spoken ofdrawn into adriftsolar weave 7 edgeless dimensionsun tether trope leap fraylathed sleek sumptuousvessels 8 I'd clay to common gods, she saysI'd ripple the courtyardlandmass omen Orisha ritualwe braid & scale 9 fortune to basket of boneviewer hillsideI'd painted an eye in the placeof your being 10 where tendencies brushwomb patinaed torso a ligamenta ligature where planets kiss sutureplentitude's if [End Page 108] Keith Jones Keith Jones is the author of Echo's Errand (Black Ocean) and the poetry chapbooks, blue lake of tensile fire (Projective Industries), shorn ellipses (Morning House), the lucid upward ladder (Verse), Fugue Meadow (Ricochet Editions), and Surface to Air, Residuals of Basquiat (Pressed Wafer). His poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Chicago Review, Denver Quarterly, Flag + Void, Harvard Review, and elsewhere. He teaches in the Africana Studies Department at the University of Massachusetts, Boston and is the current Poet-in-Residence at the New England Conservatory. Copyright © 2024 Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University

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