The Ekphrastic Review
  • The Ekphrastic Review
  • The Ekphrastic Challenges
    • Challenge Archives
  • Ebooks
  • Prizes
  • Book Shelf
    • Ekphrastic Book Shelf
    • Contributors' Book Shelf
    • TERcets Podcast
  • Workshops
  • Give
  • Submit
  • Contact
  • About/Masthead

Naranjito, by Loretta Collins Klobah

3/2/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
El Cerro 2003, photograph by Edwin Medina, of community art and renewal project directed by Chemi Rosado Seijo (Puerto Rico).
Naranjito                                                                                                                                                                                                                          
Abu, dozing in a satin chemise,
drifting away in a hammock 
knotted to her balcony, dissolves 
back into the green mountain--
her dreams quilting a hillside--
patchwork façades of houses. 

Green homes cataract down high slopes to Río de Plata.
Jade, lime, mint, green papaya, sea-washed glass,
the brightest green of young iguanas--
thus camouflaged, each house dematerializes.

On the green checkerboard of the basketball cancha, 
teens playing keep-away jump 
for a last inside hand lay-up and then swallow 
themselves down into the green of beer bottles.
Skateboarders jump green ramps, sailing up green staircases.

La guaguita de los dulces, a van selling mazorcas,
pastelitos and budín de pan fades into a green ravine,
siphoning off its subsiding bullhorn song.

Naranjito’s green jumping spiders boing off 
car windshields, landing in clerodendrum flowers.

It’s quiet now inside the mountain,
where they have all gone. 

In his green kareoque bar, Vicente holds 
an open jar to one ear 
and hears weather patterns,
clouds walking the high ridges, no grind
of industry or clamor of metal,
just mist and things sprouting,
underworld water filtering through karst, 
water chords tuned by cave rocks. 

Even the painters who wear fatigues and splash
rollers into their great buckets of green, finally paint
themselves into the upstairs corners of the grand houses 
of descendants of coffee barons and the small casitas
of children of coffee pickers. They vanish.

In El Cerro de Naranjito, a pueblo built by coffee,
an aroma of drying and roasting beans,
coffee highs and delirium tremens did not drive
architects to make even one flourish, one frilled
cornice or fluted balustrade. 
                                                      Each pueblo 
of this isle has its postcard plaza and cathedral,
a line of Seville orange trees where men and women
whisper piropos, promises scented by blossoms,
haloed by bees, but not here in Naranjito.

A range of mountains 
cradles box row buildings,
the ugly gauntlet of this town.

Obreros of the cafetales dreamed of endurance
until Hurricane San Felipe uprooted 
their lives. Paint it all back 
into the mountainside. 

En la montaña,
in a green maroonage,
families gather at the community centre
to remake the pueblo in their image,
to find the cemí of these mountains.

At just the right angle,
in just the right light, the hill looks pixelated.
Green monk parakeets fly into green walls, 
bruising wings and dropping feathers.

Sometimes artifacts are found 
by visitors looking for Naranjito,
a framed portrait
of a mother’s lost son, 
a few Goya cans of petit pois, 
a quiet radio singing,
vámonos pa’l monte, vámonos pa allá.

Loretta Collins Klobah ​

Loretta Collins Klobah is a professor of Caribbean Literature and creative writing at the University of Puerto Rico. Her poetry collection The Twelve-Foot Neon Woman (Leeds: Peepal Tree Press, 2011) received the 2012 OCM Bocas Prize in Caribbean Literature in the category of poetry and was short listed for the 2012 Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection in the Forward poetry prize series. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Best American Poetry 2016, BIM, Caribbean Beat Magazine, The Caribbean Writer, The Caribbean Review of Books, Poui: The Cave Hill Literary Annual, Susumba’s Book Bag, Moko: Caribbean Arts and Letters, WomanSpeak, TriQuarterly Review, Quarterly West, Black Warrior Review, The Missouri Review, The Antioch Review, Cimarron Review and Poet Lore.


0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    The Ekphrastic Review
    Picture
    Current Prompt
    COOKIES/PRIVACY
    This site uses cookies to deliver your best navigation experience this time and next. Continuing here means you consent to cookies. Thank you.
    Join us on Facebook:
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture



    ​
    ​Archives
    ​

    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015

    Lorette C. Luzajic theekphrasticreview@gmail.com 

  • The Ekphrastic Review
  • The Ekphrastic Challenges
    • Challenge Archives
  • Ebooks
  • Prizes
  • Book Shelf
    • Ekphrastic Book Shelf
    • Contributors' Book Shelf
    • TERcets Podcast
  • Workshops
  • Give
  • Submit
  • Contact
  • About/Masthead