09-15-2025
Darrel Alejandro Holnes
ODE TO MY FATHER, THE CAPTAIN
Praise be to my father. Glory be to his never-blinking eyes,
wide open in solidarity with the
unstoppable water flow between oceans and the endlessly swift airstreams
in the sky. Ever alert, armed only with his
compass and memorized maps of the stars, he pilots the
ship through locks in the Panama Canal to
turn tides on a dime in the dance of trade, and
unlock the Earth’s many ancient water routes.
Honor be to my father for keeping us worldly with
rubber cargo from Indonesia for our sneaker soles,
and tantalizing tantalite cargo from Brazil for our iPhones in a world
where people are defined by their crazy love of foreign things.
Praise be to the captain’s pepper-tongue
speaking orders in an island-infused English to the
ship’s home squad while also speaking a smooth-sailing Spanish to his canal
crew of good-time-guy Pana-master pilots
for navigating the planet’s sea of tongues with style and the graceful tonetics
of an articulate diplomat as any Black man
who is among the first captains of his kind would have to do. Praise
to the giants on whose shoulders my father stands, to the
shackled gallants packed top to bottom and shipped in galleons from
Badagry or Cape Coast Castle to West Indian plantations and then to our
isthmus to build and labor our canal. To the ancestors who guide my father
when his motors break with their celestial steering, with the
gentle push from their hands of sky, just as he guides me to steer my Black-
man body past us having once been considered cargo, past his now
commanding a foreign cargo ship, to me, one day, becoming the wind
sifting through all sails; to my, one day, becoming the
water through which all ships must navigate; to my, one day, becoming the
dark matter from which the stars hang at night, illuminating
the way home for all who have strayed or been stolen. And
now, kind captain, go home to rest. The last boost of
coffee has rained down from your thermos flask
and washed through your blood to mine. You who
cruise the moon around the world so tight, rest sweetly
as you sail home tonight.
MARVELOUS SUGAR BABY
A Black woman sings azúcar!
over polyrhythmic African drums
on the Latino radio stations
blazing from my smart phone
on the above-ground subway line
in Houston. La negra tiene
tumbao, sings queen Celia Cruz bluntly
about a señorita who doesn’t sweat
the small stuff and is therefore
unstoppable
as she commands us all to dance
to the ton-ton of a conga drum.
But sugar is so soluble and
precious that all it takes is a drizzle
to end the night early
and send the band home.
You’d think stronger stuff
would come from sugarcanes
so hard to chop down that white men
once thought only the Negros
could do it. Perhaps
that’s the thing about making,
the strongest structure is that which
is inevitably torn down.
This is where we find joy: a rumba despite
the high chances of rain at the Taco Milagro salsa night,
a sing-along about the sweetness of life despite
salty sweat drowning our faces
as the drum rhythm picks up
and our bodies move faster together
toward their own inevitable ends apart—
PRAISE SONG FOR MY MUTILATED WORLD
Ode to the Japanese radio oozing hot tunes in
the hot afternoon of my childhood at age four in
La Ciudad de Panamá at my abuelo’s house.
Ode to the Black women made of air and imagination who
Pito and I dance with in his living room in
La Rosita, the rosy part of Rio Abajo
known for turning bullets into blooms.
Ode to Laolwa Braz, the early 90s Brazilian siren in Kaoma who
seduces us into dancing with our dream girls and
away from the bullet-bitten bodies
plastered across the front page of La Critica News.
Ode to the famous mulatto melody howling
from the bellows of the accordion on the record
and to the Portuguese words I pronounce in near-Spanish as
I try to sing along to the forbidden dance song:
A recordação vai estar com ele aonde for.
A recordação vai estar pra sempre aonde for.
There isn’t much forbidden in my family
except piedra and hierba and the tiroteo from their trade.
There isn’t much forbidden in my family
except pistolas and secuestros, chanchudos y
corruptos who’ve become piedra’s slaves.
Pito and I save the Negras in our arms from
piedreros, drug dealers, and the cartel with
our moreno swing-hips, dips, and spins to the two-beat
carimbó drum rhythm stronger than the pulse
thumping through my little boy body
until I can’t tell the difference
between my corazón and the radio’s ton-ton,
until our dream girls become our real women,
until we’ve praise-danced our world
back to being one that
little brown-black boys like me
can believe in.
-from Stepmotherland celebrated with the author's permission and selected by PoemoftheWeek.com Founder and Editor, Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum
Darrel Alejandro Holnes is the author of Stepmotherland (Notre Dame Press, 2022) & Migrant Psalms (Northwestern Press, 2021). His literary writing has been published in English, Spanish, and French in literary journals, anthologies, other books and productions worldwide and online. He also writes, directs, and produces for the stage and screen. Most of his writing centers on love, family, race, immigration, and joy.
