Manuel Sánchez. Our Demand
By Lis Sanchez
Ferry terminal, Puerto de San Juan, Puerto Rico
November 22, 1900*
At the gangway, our demand was a straw pava.
We wore our demand jauntily cocked across our skull.
So what if rain poured inside our collar?
Our demand had a crown woven of twenty-five american dollars.
It jounced as we danced for our wives.
We affixed it to our head with rusty nails.
Our demand was a wedding mantilla drooping off our face
down to our clavicle;
it would have blurred our vision if not for the countless holes
made from years of stabbing it with a spanish comb.
The demand we wore to the point of abasement was a nun’s wimple.
To prove to our wives that we still grew beards, we made endless
adjustments,
even when we lay prostrate with our arms cruciform.
The demand we settled for was a five dollar tatter
the size of a neckerchief, and sweat ridden.
The wind snatched it, twisted it loose.
Some of us refused to step off the dock without knowing
where our demand had blown.
It was plastered across our eyes.
Notes:
*Hawaiian sugar growers’ agent MacFie promised to pay one hundred and fourteen Puerto Rican workers twenty-five dollars each prior to departing San Juan. This promise remained broken.
Source: Poetry (December 2024)