People often ask how long it takes me to write a poem. I’ve been working on the same 11 pages for almost six years. I’m grateful to Jonathan Farmerfor publishing “Brooklyn Antediluvian” in At Length Magazine. The poem is about floods of the imagination, gentrification, violence, memory, joy, names, but also a bit about real floods, Katrina, Ondoy, Sandy. I should say too, that Galeano’s gone, but I’m hoping somehow some of his spirit is in this poem. Also, I hope you enjoy it:
… When my mother married my father, as goes
the Western tradition, she changed her name
from Gelacio, which is Spanish, derived
from Gelasius, the Latin name of an African
pope, a Berber, they say. Look how far
a name can travel, borne by a brown body
whose old name vanished when he crossed
the sea as one condition for him to rule
the Christian world, which he did,
according to some, with wicked orthodoxy.