The Dominican Republic

By Erika L. Sanchez

See? This is where we gathered rain
water in the cistern
and smoked cigars
underneath the palm.

The women wore yellow
rubber caps on their heads,
the rats snaking out
from the sewers,
the smell of rotting banana.

(Remember? I made you carry me
on your back through the flooded streets.)

This is the market
where you can find skin bleach
next to the pineapple,
sinuous goats on hooks,
the smell of bitter coffee.

And here is the street
where the boys made kites
of plastic bags and dirty string,
tugged on my sleeves
and called me rubia.
(I looked away because I saw
the face of my brother).

This is where I saw the sore
on the blue black
Haitian boy, the yellow crusted
wound open on his back,
the azure of the beach.

You cannot forget this.
Promise that you won’t forget.

This is where you kissed me
after the typhoid we caught
from the quipes the man sold on the corner.
The beef was pink and you still ate it.
Oh, the chills and delirium,
fever and bile.

Remember? I remember it like this–

the smell of burning garbage,
of you and fried plantains,

the smoke in my skin,
long after I had left.

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Erika L. Sanchez is a senior at the University of Illinois at Chicago. A short story of
hers was published in this winter's edition of Other Voices, and poems of hers have
been published in the anthology What We Think: Young Voters Speak Out, and in
Gumball Poetry magazine in Portland. She recently received a Fulbright scholarship
to Spain.