Willy Palomo
Mariposa Song for Assemina
The Zebra Swallowtail evolved alongside the Assemina tree and her fruit, filling her low branches with
brilliant black-and-white wings for millennia.
Because she looked like a little papaya
to the same conquistadores confundidos
who jumbled up las Indias y las Americas,
now these new pilgrims pendejos call her
paw paw. Call her hillbilly mango,
Hoosier banana, another anchor baby
hailing from somewhere deep in jungle heat.
Imagine tongues hungry for everything
but your name. Imagine being here
for millennia only to be called exotic.
The first white man to write her name
in his journals also hewed her family
down for farmland. He returned
to Europe once he tired of enslaving
centroamericanos with centuries
of indio blood drying on his beard.
Peep this: he only came back to our Americas
angry not enough white people knew
his name. Don’t bother looking him up.
All he wanted was the gold under her
skin. For her yellow to yawn wet between
his fingers. In the chirping dark of summer
moons, before he could draw a single border
on paper, we whispered her thick green name
between our jaws & from our backs, beheld
bold black-&-white wings. We swallowed
& her leaves taught us to shimmy north,
nestled between low branches
for protection.
We laugh when you call her America’s
best kept secret. Tell me,
¿how does it feel to try to fit
her true name on your tongue?
Willy Palomo is the son of two immigrants from El Salvador. Wake the Others, his debut collection of poetry, will be published by Black Lawrence Press in March 2020. Follow them at @palomopoemas or www.palomopoemas.com
Return to September 2019 Edition
The Zebra Swallowtail evolved alongside the Assemina tree and her fruit, filling her low branches with
brilliant black-and-white wings for millennia.
Because she looked like a little papaya
to the same conquistadores confundidos
who jumbled up las Indias y las Americas,
now these new pilgrims pendejos call her
paw paw. Call her hillbilly mango,
Hoosier banana, another anchor baby
hailing from somewhere deep in jungle heat.
Imagine tongues hungry for everything
but your name. Imagine being here
for millennia only to be called exotic.
The first white man to write her name
in his journals also hewed her family
down for farmland. He returned
to Europe once he tired of enslaving
centroamericanos with centuries
of indio blood drying on his beard.
Peep this: he only came back to our Americas
angry not enough white people knew
his name. Don’t bother looking him up.
All he wanted was the gold under her
skin. For her yellow to yawn wet between
his fingers. In the chirping dark of summer
moons, before he could draw a single border
on paper, we whispered her thick green name
between our jaws & from our backs, beheld
bold black-&-white wings. We swallowed
& her leaves taught us to shimmy north,
nestled between low branches
for protection.
We laugh when you call her America’s
best kept secret. Tell me,
¿how does it feel to try to fit
her true name on your tongue?
Willy Palomo is the son of two immigrants from El Salvador. Wake the Others, his debut collection of poetry, will be published by Black Lawrence Press in March 2020. Follow them at @palomopoemas or www.palomopoemas.com
Return to September 2019 Edition