Columbus

untitled (columbus)

Tabonuco,
bought at the Bear Mountain Pow-wow
from the single Taino booth,
first thing I smelled,
that sweet wafting resin,
carried on the wind,
drawing me in.

Tabonuco
burnt in clay pots
as tribute to a past
I can't remember.

In the rain,
in Harriman,
I read about Columbus
and his account
of my people
as gregarious
as joyful
as generous.

So generous, in fact,
that his demands for tribute unmet,
he cut off their hands,
left them to bleed out
on the jungle floor.

We disdain Columbus
for what he did
to the North American Continent,
this half truth shared in classrooms,
forgetting
it wasn't the red man
but the brown
that Columbus first broke,
that joyful people
with insufficient offerings
and no longer hands
for giving.

I share those bloodlines:
my parents met, dated, married
in the Bronx,
like Sharks and Jets.

Tabonuco,
burnt in clay pots,
in tribute
and mourning,
for a past I can’t remember.

Raised eating pasta
and red sauce,
sfogiatelle and crown roast
at Christ's Mass,
my white skin,
and the arias
that would float through our home
so many evenings.

forgetting
an incompatible legacy,
that burns inside.

Charles Imbelli 2010