Image courtesy of TAKEHIKO ONO. Shared via a Creative Commons license.
∞
A Tourist Brochure of the Caribbean
Private paradise, seaside living
for those who want the island life
———-without giving
———-up
———-too much, or a damn
Reality walking distance away
6AM drunks
paint peeling off paint
——-acrylic rainbows fading with passersby
tales peeling off time
——-stories that dwindle
shattered windows
toothless men sweeping broken sidewalks
—————————–broken dreams
struggles on the daily right at your doorstep
spectacular views of the sea
——————-you can see
——————-as far as the eye can fool you
——————-into believing
——————-anything beyond yourself isn’t real
Repulsively rustic and romantic
laughing peripheral poverty in the face
gates control access
——-control power
——-control lives
——-control divide
keeping you safe, comfortable and careless
within the confines of your destructive fantasy
Leave worries and conscience behind
soak in the blinding sun, swim in forgetful waters
——-paradise
is just around the crumbled corner
∞
Ana Portnoy Brimmer is a poet and performer, creative nonfiction writer, photographer, and a Master’s student of Literature at the Department of English of the University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras. She is currently the Assistant Editor of Tonguas Magazine and a freelance writer for Migo IQ and La Pupila. She has presented her work both locally and internationally, having performed in Puerto Rico, Mexico, New York, in conferences and featured poetry readings, such as El Primer Encuentro Internacional sobre Pensamiento Crítico en el Caribe Insular and Barrio Poetix-at La Marqueta, in El Barrio. She is an Under The Volcano Fellow and a Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation Fellow. Her work has been published in Sábanas Magazine and in a Tonguas Magazine special collection, is forthcoming in The Acentos Review, and is being considered for publication in a number of other literary magazines. She employs poetry as a tool for activism, her creative work being socio-politically committed. Ana is the daughter of Mexican-Jewish immigrants, she was born in New York, but was raised, and currently lives, in Puerto Rico, all of which engendered her poetic alias, La MexiRican.