Transcription: Raquel Salas Rivera, While They Sleep (Under the Bed is Another Country), 2019

While They Sleep (Under the Bed is Another Country), Raquel Salas Rivera. Read by the author.

This transcription is bilingual.

Raquel Salas Rivera: “I look for you, my friend, but do you look for me?” – Hurray for the riff raff, “pa’lante.” “Sigue tu camino que sin time va mejor” – bad bunny, “soy peor”

hey, gringo! if you love death so much, why don't you marry it? 

one of many beloved says, why do  they only want us when we are grieving? And I say, when are we not grieving? not to be all suffering in pain define me, but when am I not holding back tears or yelling until I drop and you just go on?  Whatever being a word I stole from yours to stay numb enough to kill. Just kidding, Feds. Just kidding. The world is broken enough that if you murder me, I may or may not be remembered. It has come down  to needing to remove the body and cry in peace on a full stomach, but really isn't this all just hell, also  known as a line, also known as forever delaying our ability to touch. I will never forgive you. Stop trying.  I will never love you, no matter how many times you threaten not to love back because the trick is your  threat hides your offer to withhold what you never had. Bluff after bluff called imperial hustle. This is a sealed object, even when you think it's for you, even when you open the pages like readers  trapped by the eternal you, dust, you gone, deadbeat america. You've been riding our horses into the  ocean and driving us over cliffs since I had a history. You win and I lose. You live and I die. You vote and I don't. 

Color this without color: This is what we do. The monsters you shoot in your sleep. May we  survive another night in the shadows. 

Six equals 4,645.
Porque a veces la matemática en cualquier idioma nos miente o nos dice la verdad

Terrorism is whiteness pointing towards the mirror's frame. 
Esto está cabrón.

Citizenship as prerequisite for empathy.
Como con hambre vieja.

Treachery is a violation of the contract.
Se me está partiendo el corazón. 

Love is numb or else nullified. 
No paro de llorar.

That depends on how loud you laugh. 
No puedo llorar.

Colonialism. 
No tengo ni una foto suya.

He threw paper towels into the crowd as a humanitarian gesture.
No es una vida normal.

Our as in ally, yours as in mine. 
Realmente necesita las hormonas.

The hospital has been shut down because of the stench of corpses. 
Finalmente llegó hasta tu tío. 

She needed electricity for the machine to breathe.
esto es como the walking dead

She died, her body in the house for weeks.
Duermo con un cuchillo debajo de la almohada.

He cut to the front of the line, was shot.
Las filas son interminables.

Here have been nine reported suicides since the hurricane. 
Duermo aquí esta noche sin gasolina. 

That time we  existed because we were dying.
Abrió plaza las américas. 

Help 
Filas 

Every word you read kills me, kills us.
Y filas y más filas

The air airlines won't fly out food. There is no profit. 
No llegan las cosas a los pueblos.

The airlines offer tickets for $50 if you want to leave home forever. 
No existe un mundo poshuracán. 

If you don't accept my love, you are just like 45.
Pidieron que llenáramos el formulario por internet. 

Unreachably trapped here, there. 
Llegamos a san juan pero no estabas

A whole ocean.
La playa está totalmente destruída.

FEMA box contains one can of beans, one packet of cookies, one oatmeal bar, a small rice box.
No duermo. 

An empty white box. A coffer or a coffin. 
Hola, mi amor.

Trauma is in everyday.
Fuimos al río a buscar agua. 

Trauma is in centuries.
Finalmente tengo senal.

Appendix (that optional organ). 

We heard somewhere that a supplement defines the boundaries of the original like a no sets the boundaries of a sexual, non-sexual exchange. Like an aluminum panel on a window is meant to keep out a storm, but also like a storm produces a storm economy: dominoes, medallas, canned goods, diesel, clean water (Mary Magdalen kneels to wash our feet out of a bucket, brown and translucent from reuse.) An appendix is forgiven for latching onto its parasitic parent. An appendix is the dependent you list for tax purposes. Beauty is this appendix, since it uses up our pain to make objects that admit they feed off suffering. Very unironic. Sincerely cruel. So what use do I have for you, beauty, when you've made me depend on you by stripping me of everyone and everywhere I love? Are you my medicine or my abusive substance of  choice? To be prolific is to pretend there is such a thing as language to – as some would say – perform it.  

One week after the hurricane, we “have different views on colonialism.”
Como si te importa el nombre de mi pueblo

Very important re-death. Weekly meeting rescheduled for October 20th. Please confirm your assistance. 
Sueno con un suicido no-colectivo. 

I’m sorry
Por todo lo que sigues perdiendo. 

Let us know how we can 
Help 

I can't even begin to imagine what you were going through.
Lo que no nos hace falta es el paternalismo. 

I have no  words.
No puedo irme todavía. 

She left me a message this morning, "Cancel the flight."
Queremos asegurarnos que no termine en la calle de nuevo. 

Crying. 
Cuando le dije que era de puerto rico me dio esta mirada. 

Salt along the rim.
Me preocupan los animales.

Steps was destroyed by water.
¿qué día es hoy?

Selling donations.
Pasen si quieren recoger libros.

What is a record, if not a scar as long as a coffin filled with mud.
Hasta las cinco.

Loan as in debt relief.
No duermo porque el vecino no apaga el generador. 

Relief as debt.
Sin contaminación lumínica con contaminación rosita. 

Grief that delayed flight.
Casi no pudo verte. 

Puerto Rico trans. Death by port.
Si te visito temo beber tu agua. 

A fissure opens in the Jones Act just long enough to add sealant
Una vecina trajo comida. 

Solar powered coping.
La papa cruda sabe un poco a pepinillo. 

“We cannot keep FEMA, the military and the first responders in Puerto Rico forever.”
Lo que tenemos hoy

(Note for a friend who wants to  commit suicide after the hurricane.) No one teaches us to accept death because death, that canned death stays empty inside: the great hole of  fuck it that wants to devour us. No one explains how we can become part of the impossible new world  that is tomorrow, or how we are supposed to avoid falling into the perfect and permanent under eye circle we call facing the day. Mana, how not to understand? That is the question I avoid with the  organizational fervor of a rescue team that never arrives, but I'll tell you this: desire isn't always  followed by death. Sometimes I run into you in the street and you shine like an orb por a solar lamp, but you are still worth more than all the generators. (In case you haven't been told a thousand times) Y other times without the tilde i.i.i. Other times your words reach me like a fundraiser that explodes and temporize this truth like an espachurrao. (squashed, flatten, spread.) Aguacate on the sidewalk. Green-grey from so much loving. We first have to find better answers  than these automatic things. I don't say this to add responsibilities, but rather so that you know, sister, that the attempted murder comes from within, like the last refuge of a cowardly colonialism. Come here and I’ll give you food and shelter while I have it. Que te añoño, will (cuddle? spoil? hold and rock and sing?) you and will duplicate the hugs. I can't heal the fathomless, but what kind of world would  this be without you? What kind of world is this that harasses you? Without rescue, let's speak of the future. Not as realists, not as visionaries, let's speak of the future because we will find it in a moth-eaten rug, in the tea of the drunken tree, in the buenos días, there is coffee of a confused and sincere embrace. We have a bed and we remember. 
Yours forever, 
Raquel. 

(Nota para una amiga que desea suicidarse después del huracán) 
Nadie nos enseña a aceptar la muerte porque la muerte, esa muerte de latita, queda vacía en nosotros: el gran hueco del carajo que nos quiere devorar. Nadie nos dice como podemos integrarnos al nuevo mundo imposible del mañana, como se supone que evitemos caer en el círculo perfecto de una ojera permanente que llamamos darle cara al día. Mana, ¿cómo no entenderlo? Esa es la pregunta que evito con el fervor organizativo de un equipo de rescate que nunca llega, pero te voy a decir esto: después del deseo, no siempre viene la muerte. A veces te encuentro por la calle y brillas como astro o como lámpara solar, pero igual vales más que todos los generadores (por si no te lo han dicho mil veces). Y otras veces, sin tilde, i.i.i. Otras veces, me llegan tus palabras como una recaudación de fondos que explota y temporaliza la verdad, como un aguacate espachurrao en la acera, verdegris de tanto amar. Nos toca primero encontrar contestaciones mejores que estas mierdas automáticas. No lo digo por añadir responsabilidades, sino para que sepas que, hermana, el intento de maternos viene desde adentro como ultimo refugio de un colonialismo cobarde. Vente paca, que te doy comida y albergue mientras la tenga que te añoño y te duplico los abrazos. No podré sanar lo insondable, pero qué mundo sería este sin ti. Que mundo este que te acosa. Sin rescate, hablemos del futuro. Ni realistas, ni visionarios, hablemos del futuro porque lo encontraremos en la alfombra carcomida en el té sincero. Tenemos cama y memoria. 
Tuya para siempre, 
Raquel 

For a moment in the rapid collapse, I felt I was dying.
Ayer volvió la luz.

But I was still alive.
Hoy se fue de nuevo. 

In the river we fish whitefish.
Llama lo antes posible si este número no funciona. 

In the  river, I left my wallet. In the river, the keys. In the river, my door. In the river, a body uncounted in the mud. A river.

Si de tierra nacimos a la tierra retornamos. Si de la luz nacimos hacia la luz retomamos. Si del fuego aprendimos. Si del fuego…

Los americanos won't understand our histories. That one about the pig dressed as a rich lady (all  dressed up) was so we would know that not everything that shines is gold and so we would not rebel. Juan bobo was supposed to explain carefully and slowly that we deserve to die poor, roofless, at the mercy of a colorless world. A rainbow Marianne or me salvé luxuries were pig pearls. When I stood for the first time on the land that belonged to this university where everything was clean, where folks used the right  clothes and the pearls were real, I knew right away that every Boricua was Juan Bobo's pig and Juan Bobo, that here, they would always see us as facsimiles of their nation. Our clothes didn't fit right, our hair was noticeably different. Our voices. Our names. Our ways of living together. Our collective habits. 

To translate is not to communicate nor to reach the post office mailbox without a key nor pack one's self  for a domestic rate (with the exception of Puerto Rico). It isn't giving up, driving into the freezing lake, or believing in the current. To translate is to be the illegible witness of oneself. It is to explain things enough so that they think they understand, but to know that in the end they won't understand our histories. It is what Juan Bobo tells the pig and what the pig answers. 

Los americanos no entenderán nuestras historias. Aquella de la puerca vestido de dama (emperifollá) era para que supieramos que todo lo que brilla no es oro y también para que no nos rebeldáramos. Juan bobo se supone que nos explicara cautelosa y detenidamente que merecíamos morir pobres, sin techo, a la merced de un mundo incoloro. Nuestros lujos de rainbow, marianne o me salve eran perlas de puerca. Cuando pise el terreno de esta universidad donde todo era limpio, la gente usaba la ropa que les corresponde y las perlas eran reales, supe inmediatamente que todo boricua era la puerca de juan bobo y juan bobo, que acá nos verán siempre como facsímiles de su nación. Nuestra ropa estaba mal ubicada. Nuestro pelo era notablemente diferente. Nuestras voces. Nuestros nombres. Nuestra forma de convivir. Nuestras manías colectivas. 

Traducir no es comunicarse, ni llegar a un correo sin llave de buzón, ni empaquetarse para envíos domésticos (con la excepción de Puerto Rico). No es rendirse, ni es tirarse al lago congelado, ni creer en la corriente. Traducir es ser un testigo ilegible de uno mismo. Es explicar lo suficiente para que piensen que te entienden, pero saber que al fin y al cabo no entenderán nuestras historias. Es lo que juan bobo le dice a la puerca y lo que la puerca le contesta. 

Oh, to be white America. Oh, to be white America owed to being white America owed to being white  America or to be white in America, or to be white America or to be America. White America. 

(Singing). Puerto rico, puerto riiiico. Es mi tierra natal. No la cambio por ninguna. Aunque me paguen un capital.

Courses begin in early November. Tuve un estudiante que me pidió veinticinco pesos pa comer.

Public schools are not ready to open. You  must first make sure they are up to pre hurricane standards. La biblioteca permanece cerrada. 911. Nos queman. 

We speculate under the stars naming each after someone you may not find. Ya empezaron a joder los fantasmas.  

A theme park called paradise. Borinken florece.  

Rage as a  passive form of mourning. Mourning as an active form of rage. No sé si tiene comida para los gatos. 

Hungers as  the building blocks of all other pains. Un liquido negro se expande hacia la playa un contaminante desconocido.  

Broken on time's wheel. Como pasa el tiempo. 

How far we will we go to believe, we will save everyone with a box of rice and beans. Should I forgive myself for the cruelty I showed when I was most beaten down, clawing up the walls of my heart with an  ice pick? I saw over an arm that reached down to me from the edges of my chest. Saw your face, a  sudden burst of hot water in the winter air. The pick pierced your hand and the pick was my hand. A  long nail reaching out of my flesh into yours until you were wounded. I did that because I had been living  at the bottom of this heart, eating the ashes of my ancestors and the children I bore in silence. I  promised them a whispered vengeance. 

You'd been living in the outside world seeing films, laughing, being overworked, living, paying bills. How  could I just move on? I'm sorry for the things I said when I was broke in that autumn, when so many of  us were killed and cremated. I'm sorry I said you didn't care, spitting the cactus and broke a plate against  my chest when you weren't looking. I'm sorry. I was afraid to burn a flag because I had nowhere to  return. Instead, I cut across our sheets planting red seeds in the cupboards. 

A person showed up wearing my face asking for an ID. De qué vale tener seguro médico si no tiene luz el hospital.  

Tagged in more bad  news. Decoramos el poste caído.  

She arrived three years ago. She is now married to a white man. She  lives in Allentown. He arrived five days ago. He's now living with a cousin. He's still looking for work. She  arrived one year ago. She got a job at Target. She takes pictures on the train and wears long Johns. They  

arrived a month ago. They broke up last week. They are depressed. They can't remember when they  arrived. They keep threatening to move back. I can live without electricity. I've done it before.

Repartiendo pastillas como chicles. 

They wear their army uniforms with pride and always swipe right.

La montamos donde sea que estemos. 

Puerto Rico for four weeks looking for a good time.

Cualquier cosa pasa por casa.  

A drain on  our economy. 

Julia Kellerher. When she saw the leafless trees, she thought winter was a hurricane. Me dio el PTSD. 

Over the mall loud speakers, they kept calling out names. Me dijo que los puertorriqueños hablan español en inglés.  

More  than a thousand. ¿Por qué hay una parranda en el walmart?  

There is a pit bull possessiveness in the language of  empire. Our people can know belonging in being possessed and in possession by aviating consent. The American who said that we must take care of our people, spoke as an agent of the government she  often claimed did not represent her. When she refused to say our president, it was because she understood that she had not consented to fascism, that he did not belong to her vision of a collective  protected by a guardian state. He was not her president because he wasn't a usurper. 

Of course, this was not the case with our people in Puerto Rico. For those who feel and are US citizens  born and raised in the country that is not Puerto Rico, that is above Puerto Rico, have an astounding  ability to not understand. It is as old as the first time they learned that objects were to be wielded by  owners. That America was the best of all the evils and that their great nation had once been a colony,  but was no longer. The weeks after the hurricane, the months, what I dreaded most was this newfound  awareness that we existed. I knew that no matter how loud I screamed, the knowledge I had acquired  through love and death meant nothing to these ex colonized colonizers. They would only hear echoes of  their own good deeds. Like so many missionaries kneeling before a familial god. 

Cesaron las ayudantías. 

When the cameras stop rolling, they look away. Estamos bien.

They are used to  having house insurance for the fire, flood insurance for the storm. A otros les va peor.  

Life  insurance for the kids. Lo peor es el frío. 

Degrees upon degrees of assurance for a guaranteed future. Lo peor son los mosquitos. 

Los militares versus the military. What  happens is when you're close, you can see there are many. When they charge leveling, all with 200 mile  per hour winds and they knock down your fence from the roots up. Even if they feel like a unit, on their  faces you can see multiple impact points. The ways of fragmenting the body with pain, experiential  dysphoria, the rupture between the body and the psyche of your history. What happens is when you  spend too much time hating the same thing, you start seeing fissures, how the parts coordinate and  come together. You start seeing how many family members they have that look like you and it hurts  deeper than the bottom of an empty suitcase. 

What they say isn't true. It's easier to know and live with the enemy than hate him. It's even easier to  live and love the enemy hating him. Notice that I never say be the enemy because no matter how many  parrots I confuse, no matter how much like brothers we are in battle, I still want to die with my ashes  scattered over humatas like mi abuelo.

In these sentences, the word like isn't comparative. It's more  of an interrogation we go through before deciding The logic of being now colonized. Not being in relation to colonialism, almost isn't worth it. I don't know if you follow me, but I keep going downhill  towards the sea. When opening the gate, the living rooms flood. Each lock is a dam. We always cry with  the rain and boy has it rained. If you open the window, the gases enter, the skin reacts to the air as if it  were an invading army.

Los militares versus the military. lo que pasa es que cuando estás cerca puedes ver que son muchos. cuando embisten, arrasan con vientos de 200 millas por hora y tumban tu verja desde las raíces. Aunque se sientan como unidad, puedes ver sus caras los múltiples puntos de impacto, la formas de fragmentar un cuerpo con el dolor, la disforia experiencial, la ruptura entre el cuerpo y la psiquis de tu historia. Lo que pasa es que cuando pasas mucho tiempo odiando lo mismo, comienzas a vislumbrar las grietas, como las partes se juntan coordinadamente. comienzas a ver cuantos familiares tienen que se parecen a ti y te duele más hondo que el fondo de una maleta vacía. Lo que dicen no es cierto. es más fácil conocer y convivir con el enemigo que odiarlo. aún más fácil es convivir y amar al enemigo, odiándolo.

Noten que nunca digo ser el enemigo porque por más que confunda cotorras, por más que en batallas de campo y monte seamos como hermanos, todavía quiero morir con mis cenizas esparcidas por humatas (como mi abuelo). En estas oraciones, la palabra como no es comparativa, es más bien el interrogatorio por el cual pasamos antes de decidir que casi no importa el sinrazón de estar colonizados (sin serlo). no sé si me sigues, pero sigo por un camino cuesta abajo hacia el mar. al abrir el portón, se inundan las salas. cada seguro sirve como represa. siempre lloramos con la lluvia y ha llovido. si abres la ventana, entran los gases. la piel reacciona al aire como a un ejército invasor.

107 days.

Pa. L. Ma. As. 

Mac. Donalds. 

Ver-de. Amariiilla. Ro-jo. [Plosive noises]

Baby haired mountain. Super. Cake. 

We don't accept Puerto Rican IDs. La labor pedagógica diaria. Flashlights scanning lots filled with  debris. Searchless. Entre la metro y la isla. Under the covers. Debajo de la cama. Not a single blue  tarp in heaven. Pero sobran cielos plásticos en el paraíso. 

Dedicado a todos los que siguen luchando por un Puerto Rico libre del yugo colonial y para mi madre Yolanda Rivera Castillo.

Acknowledgements.  

I'd like to thank hostile books, Pan America Poetry Series, The Offing, Slice Magazine and the Poetry  Project Newsletter for publishing selections from this book. I'm grateful for the support of so many.  Thank you Samson, Cardielle, Renee, mi madre, mis tios, mi primito Miguelon, mi primita Sofia, ambas abuelas, caleb, cindy, nicole, erica, ricardo, carina, farid, eloisa, denice, malcom, yesenia, angel, hannah, mari, ana, syra, carmen, tania, grimaldi, gabe, raquel a., mon, fabián, genji, vanessa, julio, marc anthony, itiola, noor, nikki, joe, yara, miriam, santa, vickie, pocholo, david, husnaa, wes, fred, chip, frank báez, mayra, christopher powers, gegman, ginger, colette, kirwyn, ashely y raena (wow, qué mucha gente linda y eso que me olvidé de muchos…) y, pues, gracias a todos los que se pasan jodiendo por ahí denunciando la ley PROMESA, el neoliberalismo, el fascismo, etc. ustedes son mi vida.