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# Two Poems by Urayoán Noel
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/two-poems-by-urayoan-noel/
- Published: 2015-10-28T11:02:35.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:42:56.000Z
- Description: Our poetry editor, Joe Pan, has selected two poems by Urayoán Noel for his series that brings original poetry to the screens of Hyperallergic readers.
- Author: Joe Pan
- Tags: Poetry, Hyperallergic Poetry, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:13 (2014, 2015, part 3)

*Our poetry editor, Joe Pan, has selected two poems by Urayoán Noel for* [*his series*](http://hyperallergic.com/tag/hyperallergic-poetry/) *that brings original poetry to the screens of Hyperallergic readers.*

![Vincent van Gogh, "The bat" (1886) (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, via Wikimedia Commons)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/10/van-gogh-bat-poetry.jpg)

Vincent van Gogh, “The bat” (1886) (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, via Wikimedia Commons)

\* \* \*

## Batsonnets

 “a shit-ton of bats”  
 —Javier Zamora (Austin, July 2015)

*for my fellow cantomundistas*

Our freestyle flows like “a shit-ton of bats”  
(to steal a phrase from Javier Zamora).  
Taxonomists of capital flora,  
we barnstorm the city with verbal gats  
and take aim at the hedge-fund plutocrats  
trolling us on social-justice fora.  
Freedom is a flick of the fedora  
(they own our land but not our poets’ hats).  
Looking for a city to get lost in,  
we were dreaming when we came upon it.  
Its border? The bodies that we crossed in,  
cursing in street Spanish (not “doggone it!”).  
Much like the Chiroptera of Austin  
we tag a bridge with our sonar sonnet.

What’s in a shit-ton? (I’ll ask Zamora.)  
It’s hard to count amid the faceless frats.  
After a few *palabras* and *true dats*  
we explorer-poets channel Dora.  
No map. No app. Surveying ahora.  
Where are the bodegas and laundromats  
amid the loft-conversion ziggurats?  
What gives a place its iconic aura?  
(Hint: it’s not about ironic flannel,  
artisanal cupcakes or IPAs,  
a meme workshop or a hashtag panel  
for zombie PhDs and MFAs.)  
Our dream streets broadcast on a batchannel  
whose batsignal reverberates for days.

Barrio echolocution sounds like bats,  
bachata Petrarchs wail for their Laura,  
Tejano dive bars bleed raza sonora.  
Must mohawk’d jípsters with designer tats  
sip ten-buck drinks to wax DJ ersatz?  
We want sounds not streaming on Pandora,  
beat-spelunkers aiming for aurora,  
moonwalking in chancleta hi-heel flats.  
In Spanish bat’s *murciélago* (blind mouse?),  
I see us all in the bear-soaked moon though:  
we bump and grind and Lupe owns the house  
and Sandra swings, that reggaetón tune though…  
so much floricanto in our mundo  
because there’s no teoría without caos.

El Gúgol says they’re “Mexican free-tailed,”  
the bats that “migrate” to that Congress bridge  
not called my back but someone’s privilege  
(think Congress and the suits they’ve never failed  
and the corporate corpses they’ve retailed).  
Electorally they’ll speak “our” language:  
“Yo *jablo* un *poquitou*.” (Not a smidge.)  
But who are the deported and surveilled?  
Who owns our urban archipelagos?  
Words privatized. Once the escuela goes,  
nostalgia factories hard-sell *agos*  
like Big Macs at the maquiladora  
but no one bats down us murciélagos!  
Let’s swarm vanilla streets till glam Gomorrah!  

**Batcoda**

Running out of rhymes ending in -ora  
and going batty from a lack of bats,  
I map the spirit’s wordless habitats,  
free-riffing, like Williams on his kora  
(son of a fierce Boricua señora  
as am I, one of many Rican brats  
all born too late to be bugalú cats,  
watch Clemente bat or Julia score a  
run-on line.) My broomstick bat will shatter  
(*that* Klemente rode a wooden stallion).  
I’ll invoke the island’s antimatter,  
the hemisphere’s populist battalion  
that claims its peace, beautiful rebellion  
of bat-shit particles born to scatter.

## Disassembler

 **(SIN SEMBLANZA)**

I among many in the deafening overpass  
it’s demolition time the doable, forgoable self

 Y LOS CALABOZOS

I occupy this ambit, this annex  
the amber of sunset the clunkier remix

 DE MIS OJOS BORROSOS

my body as is like a bus never full  
sad or sidewinding a function of exhaust

 CAVADORA DE FOSOS

through hoists and cranes and my eyes a semblance  
of premoistened ocean no wells around

 SOCAVADORA DE GNOSIS

this walled machinery of hate to invoice  
of sickness to spreadsheet signal lights into the ozone

 GRABADORA DE VOCES

no remedies to post no theories to posit  
houses unnumbered the welt of nations

 EN EL TERRENO SIEMPRE AJENO

parked in alleys no thru-route before me  
and longtime after the swipes of empire

 DEL YO Y SUS DESGLOSES

I’m too old to be carded becoming these cordoned-off territories  
mine is the skin’s tether too loose-tongued to linger

 HACIENDO LAS PACES CON EL DETERIORO

in an atmosphere of harrows my history of landings  
on the outs of the moment missed screenings

 DE LA CIUDAD Y EL SIGNO

I clamber the ember the numbest of numbers  
lowballs the remainder of touch on the flesh

 CUANDO APENAS SE EXISTE

no skylights to open no searchlights to warn  
when the body was born I for one was burning

 A FUERZA DE CHISTE

foreclosing the tremors no view of the river  
I asked to be coursing the hemisphere’s causeways

 AFUERA DE LO VIRAL

instead doubly stranded as fuselage fragments  
I crash the contingent as mute and as mutinous

 DE LA SUCURSAL DE LA IMAGEN

as a castaway blogger ghostwriting new entries  
on old motifs like you know, the lyric self and stuff

 ENTRE FLAGELACIONES COTIDIANAS

it’s hard to buy this lyre nobody wants it when it’s free  
when it falls it makes a thud that sound is us

 Y CANCIONES DESEANTES

confessional/confectional gimmicks, jimmied locks of text  
the self’s presentation in congresses and roundtables

 ABRIENDO EL FRASCO QUE DICE “RENAZCO”

lugging laptops to dive bars in search of interconnectivity  
for where there are widgets the self is legible

 Y LANZÁNDOLO HACIA EL MAR

whether the analog folds or holds all depends  
on the digits appended to the hands interlocking

 DESDE EXTRAMUROS SIN CIUDADES

in theaters and beachfronts where I’ve never been to  
and will never go because going is finally a no-go

 CAUTIVO DE LA HUIDA PROMETIDA

meaning’s where I am this litter as is  
collage of bricks ah, the sandlots of this land

 Y ES QUE CUANDO NACEN LAS NACIONES

it’s hard to play these days alone, besides I’m running out of days  
the fires that transpired did not spare these latitudes

 ES DE CABEZA Y DE TERROR

and somehow the injuries must become an example  
a particle’s teachable moment as if moments could do more than shimmer

 COMO UN ACERTIJO ESCRITO EN EL TAJO

can the shimmer be taught, shared? is there co-presence  
in this promisedland of voice where we read with silencers-in-hand?

 EN EL BRAZO MECÁNICO DE LOS PARQUES URBANOS

must we disband the shock troupe that called for  
a new sense of urgency embedded in this loss?

 QUE SE LLENARON DE AGUANIEVE Y BALAZOS

how to wear the despair like an emblem we’ve made ours  
lacking a larger scheme? all I can do is lobby for your touch

 Y HAY CUERPOS MARCHANDO Y MANCHANDO ACERAS

pretending the outside hasn’t always looked like this  
and serve up this stridency that flows up the windpipe, this air

 Y HAY DEVOCIONES QUE SON TAMBIÉN HORAS DURAS

my state is uncharted and I’m ready to face the dying day  
traders unlocking the shudder becoming the ungovernable shadow

 O SEA QUE DESENSAMBLEMOS EL SEMBLANTE

the ether’s theremin there, I’m in  
  
\* \* \*

Originally from San Juan, Puerto Rico, Urayoán Noel is the author of several books of poetry in English and Spanish, the most recent of which is *Buzzing Hemisphere/Rumor Hemisférico* (University of Arizona Press, 2015). Other works include the critical study *In Visible Movement: Nuyorican Poetry from the Sixties to Slam* (University of Iowa Press, 2014), winner of the LASA Latina/o Studies Section Book Award, and *The Edgemere Letters*, a multimedia collaboration with artist Martha Clippinger. Also a translator and performer, and a former CantoMundo and Ford Foundation fellow, Noel lives in the Bronx and teaches at NYU. Learn more at [urayoannoel.com](http://urayoannoel.com/?ref=hyperallergic.com) and [wokitokiteki.com](http://www.wokitokiteki.com/?ref=hyperallergic.com), an improvisational poetry vlog.