By Roque Salas Rivera

a billboard announces the construction of the new electric plant
next to the basketball court where you play like you study.
you are sick

because they told your parents the stains in the sky
were renovations.
the proof they offered was the pentecostal church
and its parking.
someone planted a table in the park, offered free tarot,
and read that in two decades your government
would empty your account.

you pray and pray your barrio’s economic situation will improve.
you’re answered by machines that offer you numerical options.

you know no solution is linear.
the gps sends you down a street that no longer exists,
but you memorized beaches and their relations to
cement as if these were your history,
this your scintillating railway.

the elders try to not die despite cancer
and our rulers’ persistent hate.
you are young and subsidize your life with kites and films.
but you also get sick because the water is sick,
because the buildings have asbestos, because your feet
touch the ground and you breathe while you sleep.

Poet Bio

Roque Salas Rivera was born in Puerto Rico and currently lives in Philadelphia. Of their work, informed by Leftist politics as well as Spanish language literary traditions, Rivera has said, “There are poems like solidarities. This is the most ideal case. It makes people reach out to me, like after a reading, when I write something and other Boricuas are like, ‘This poem about the debt made me cry.’ When I see them cry, and they’re thanking me for writing it, that’s not just a poem. It becomes larger than itself. It becomes an interaction in the world, which is doing a kind of political work.” They are the 2018–19 poet laureate of Philadelphia and a co-organizer of the festival We (Too) Are Philly. See More By This Poet

More By This Poet