Assistant Editor Madeleine Wattenberg: There is only one complete sentence in Kyle Carrero Lopez’s poem “From an Agnostic,” and it is the opening line: “Hostile talk of Santería bites my ears like frost.” What follows are anaphoric parentheticals, each offering a reason for the speaker’s reaction to what they’ve overheard. From lived knowledge and familial histories, the poem generates alternatives to distorted representations of Santería, an Afro-Cuban religion that at its origins merged the Yoruban spiritual figures Orichás with Catholic saints in order to mask spiritual practices in front of Spanish slavers and colonizers.
I spent a lot of time thinking about parentheticals while reading this poem. Parentheses usually indicate a digression, a nonessential thought, language without grammatical relation to its surroundings. Yet through them Lopez reshuffles the possibilities, demonstrating that what has been erased or discarded is often what is most essential, and ultimately questioning narrative-formation itself. I read these parentheses as antilinear, antibinary, antihierarchical. Everything is in relation, and Lopez shows us that while it may not be possible to speak outside of it, history can be rearranged, its mouths can be multiplied.
To hear Kyle read his poem, click below:
From an Agnostic
Hostile talk of Santería bites my ears like frost.
(Because Afro-Cuba) (Because the ancestors
fought for it) (Because the enslaved
saved what slavers tried to take) (Because
my black) (Because my blood) (Because no
cruelty should cross me) (Because the entire
goat is consumed) (Because the entire
chicken is consumed) (Because Azealia’s
chicken closet is better known) (Because
the Sublime song “Santeria” is better known)
(Because santeras are my tías) (Because santeras
pray for me) (Because Cal and I shook
the acheré as Abuelo prayed on Mom’s cancer)
(Because Yemayá’s portrait in any home
brings me home) (Because Abuela keeps an altar)
(Because my mother keeps a glass of water
out for the saints) (Because Orichás switch
genders) (Because some Orichás took lovers
of their gender) (Because I once trusted the narratives)
(Because Hollywood’s Africa) (Because the
Catholic church) (Because blood must be seen
for cruelty to be named) (Because only some are born
clean) (Because history) (Because history repeats)
(Because history has mouths we speak through)
Kyle Carrero Lopez is a Black Cuban-American poet living in Brooklyn. His poems are published or forthcoming in Poetry, the Florida Review, Cosmonauts Avenue, and elsewhere, as well as in the anthologies Grabbed (Beacon Press, 2020) & The Breakbeat Poets Volume 4: LatiNEXT (Haymarket Books, 2020).
