
Holnes, Darrel Alejandro
WebsiteDarrel Alejandro Holnes’ poetry has been published in or is forthcoming in Poetry Magazine, Best American Experimental Writing, American Poetry Review, Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts, Callaloo, The Caribbean Writer, Day One, The Puritan Magazine, and elsewhere in print and online. He is the co-author of PRIME: Poetry & Conversations, a Rainbow List Selection by the America Library Association, and On Poetics, Identity & Latinidad: CantoMundo Poets Speak Out. He is the co-editor of Happiness, The Delight-Tree: An Anthology of Contemporary International Poetry. He teaches creative writing at NYU. Holnes has received scholarships, fellowships, or residencies at Canto Mundo, Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Vermont College of Fine Arts Postgraduate Writers Conference, Summer Literary Seminars: Kenya, Saltonstall Arts Colony, the Rose O’Neill Literary House, and elsewhere. He is from Panama.
The Art of Diplomacy
The diplomat kids at the international school were all
from somewhere else, and those of us who weren’t, needed to be
so I pulled a Sean John shirt over my head
as if the logo were an American flag, although not the same one
President Bush saluted since nobody at school supported
American wars or military operations like the one that destroyed
el Chorrillo, the bombed ghetto behind my house
where I could still hear ghosts at night crying
socorro! as if even in death they never escaped
the flames. At school I wore a bandana like Tupac Shakur
and other rappers our Panamanian raperos and reggaetoneros
imitated in their music videos about
wanting to escape gun violence in el ghetto
but being unable to leave good hood pussy behind.
There was always something more credible
about our moreno stories when they were
told to the beat of an African drum
played with an American gun
as if doing so made us black cowboys or
the next closest thing: West Coast gangster rap gods
who rich kids worldwide, like the ones at my school,
could pretend to be whenever they wanted.
To be a diplomat like our fathers is to serve
the public what they need to eat
like when Alessa speaks with little sympathy to me about
her moreno chauffer’s drug-addicted and jailhouse past
and I serve her Tupac lyrics: First ship ’em dope and let ’em deal the brothers.
Give ’em guns, step back, and watch ’em kill each other.
To be a diplomat like our mothers is to understand others whether or not
you’re understood. Not black like you, Alessa, says,
black as in poor. They fill their lives with drugs because
they can’t afford much else, she attempts sympathy
while speaking to a teenage me rocking Timberland boots
and the most expensive urban wear my parents’ money could buy
wondering what Panamanian void I was filling with
these American things. Perhaps there was a star-shaped black hole
the size of the Panama Canal in the Tommy Hilfiger flag draped
over my chest as if my chest were a casket, as if the government could fold
my body and hand it with condolences to my next of kin
as they failed to do for the families of West Indian men
killed in service of an imported American dream
during the canal’s construction.
Maybe in this black hole my negrura is finally its own country
and I’m finally at home in my own skin.
Published in Day One by Amazon
I Always Promised I’d Never Do Drag
You liked me as straight as a man
in love with another could ever be,
and I did too. But you also loved
women, how their backs widen
where hips appear, how their necks
swerve like swans swallowing water
when they call your name,
their long hair stroking your face
as they wake from nestling
your chest the morning after.
So here I am wearing the wig I made
in the image of the blondes you preferred
but said you could never love, applying eyeliner
but not for it to run. I will never
love him again, I fearlessly announce to the mirror
as I beat my face with powder base into submission,
as if one could ever fall out of the hero’s arms
and not back into peril. Tonight,
for the first time, I dance to save myself
from distress, becoming the one woman
you’ll never have instead. Tonight, at the Esta Noche bar
in the Mission District, I’m distance. The closest I ever came
to doing drag before was when I was crowned prom king
but chose instead the queen’s tiara;
cubic zirconia somehow closer
to real than the king’s cardboard cut-out crown.
Tonight I’m Diamante, extravaganza eleganza,
a gurl singing shine to the Yoncé record,
declaring myself the Queen B of the Night, singing
take all, of me, I just want to be the girl you like, the kind of girl you like
sashay-shantae-strut-shimmy shining on stage,
dunking it like an Oreo, making the masses
shake they asses at the command
of the scepter firmly in my hand. A king,
I queen so hard my earth-quaking rule
breaks the laws of nature; flesh-colored spanx
and control-top leggings tuck it away
where the sun don’t shine;
a black lace-up corset covers the missing rib
but lets the rest of me hang out enough to werk
and soak up applause from an audience
who loves this boy dressed as girl,
boy dressed as girly man, boy dressed as man
enough to drag, man dragging on,
man moving on, man gone.
PRIME: Poetry & Conversation (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2014)
- Best New Play for The Burning Room from Wichita State University
- The Farrar Prize in Playwriting for The Burning Room from the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor
- 2016 Split This Rock! National Poetry Contest (finalist)
- 2015 Boston Review/”Discovery” Poetry Prize (semifinalist)
- The Pablo Neruda Prize in Poetry (finalist)
- The Rumi Prize in Poetry from Arts & Letters (finalist)
- Hopwood Award in Poetry (finalist)
- Theodore Roethke Prize in Poetry (two-time finalist)