Expats
by Éric Morales-Franceschini
we thought we’d kick it a while on the isla [1],
in a sleepy beach town called Rincón, so
we rented a room in a house owned, it
turned out, by gringos, or at least that’s
what I’d been taught to call them (think weapons
of the weak); but they called themselves, expats, a
word I’d never heard before; and, sure, it’s not
like I could blame them, these retirees, all this
splendor, but it’s not like my (grand)parents chose
the grit of New York over this; and so I couldn’t
help but wonder: are they rebels, these expats, did they
forsake their Patria? or is it just that simple:
when they come, they’re expats (think quaint, think
choice) but when we come, we’re immigrants
(think peril, think surplus); so I sat there
on that beach, my grandparents’ graves
a short drive away, and I thought about
how they re-patriated themselves to the isla,
knowing they would soon die, and it wasn’t
sentimental, just a last rite: they had become
repats, so to speak; and so
there I was, thinking I knew my place,
but later that day my isla family
referred to me as a gringo (think anomaly,
think counterfeit) and said it so
matter of factly that all I could do
was ask: does that make me
an apat? (think orphaned, think schizoid).
[1] I mean to say Puerto Rico, but it could just as well be México, the D.R., etc. (i.e. those economically vulnerable to, and in the proximity of, the United States and its surplus of bourgeois bohemians).
in a sleepy beach town called Rincón, so
we rented a room in a house owned, it
turned out, by gringos, or at least that’s
what I’d been taught to call them (think weapons
of the weak); but they called themselves, expats, a
word I’d never heard before; and, sure, it’s not
like I could blame them, these retirees, all this
splendor, but it’s not like my (grand)parents chose
the grit of New York over this; and so I couldn’t
help but wonder: are they rebels, these expats, did they
forsake their Patria? or is it just that simple:
when they come, they’re expats (think quaint, think
choice) but when we come, we’re immigrants
(think peril, think surplus); so I sat there
on that beach, my grandparents’ graves
a short drive away, and I thought about
how they re-patriated themselves to the isla,
knowing they would soon die, and it wasn’t
sentimental, just a last rite: they had become
repats, so to speak; and so
there I was, thinking I knew my place,
but later that day my isla family
referred to me as a gringo (think anomaly,
think counterfeit) and said it so
matter of factly that all I could do
was ask: does that make me
an apat? (think orphaned, think schizoid).
[1] I mean to say Puerto Rico, but it could just as well be México, the D.R., etc. (i.e. those economically vulnerable to, and in the proximity of, the United States and its surplus of bourgeois bohemians).
Born in Puerto Rico and raised in southern Florida, Éric Morales-Franceschini is former construction worker, US Army veteran, and community college grad who now holds a PhD from UC, Berkeley and is Assistant Professor of English and Latin American Studies at the University of Georgia. He is the author of Autopsy of a Fall, winner of the 2020 Gloria Anzaldúa Poetry Award, and The Epic of Cuba Libre: the mambí, mythopoetics, and liberation (University of Virginia Press, 2022). His poetry and reviews have appeared in Moko, Kweli, Acentos Review, Newfound, Boston Review, and elsewhere.