Fossils on a Red Flag

Poetry
by Amelia Díaz Ettinger
As a student of biology at the University of Puerto Rico in the 1970s, the author worked for the Department of Natural Resources. She was sent to survey the nesting sites of several species of birds at a lagoon in Culebra, a municipality of the island of Puerto Rico. During the two years she worked as a biologist on that island, she discovered a world that was previously unknown to her. The US Navy used the island as a bombing range. She learned to look for a red flag before swimming in the turquoise waters. The flag signaled bombings would occur that day. The signal failed on some occasions. While she swam in the coral reefs with a friend, she met on the island, the author saw the devastation of coral reefs and undetonated bombs. She watched and listened to horrifying stories of despair. But during that time, she also learned about the resilience of the people of Culebra. They stood like David against the Goliath of the US Navy to end the use of their home as a target range. In the end, it was a humble turtle that brought the attention of the outside world to their plight and the end of a horrifying practice.

Published by: Finishing Line Press, Georgetown, KY
ISBN-13: 978-1646624423
Publication date: February 19, 2021
Cover design: Kristin Summers
Trade Paper
5.5" x 8.5"
34 pages
$14.99

Praise for Fossils on a Red Flag

"Fossils on a Red Flag by Amelia Díaz Ettinger is a powerful collection of poems that interrogates the (mis)use as a gunnery and bombing practice site by the U.S. military of Puerto Rico’s Isla Culebra. This work grapples with what is lost in the language of official government orders and, by doing so, sheds light on the human and environmental costs. With sharp turns of lyricism and image shaped by the insistent voice of witness, this collection honors the history of los Culebrenses who have spent generations gathering 'baskets of loss / —[and who] still gather after so many hurricanes.' Like the queen conch, present in a series of these poems and whose shell is a symbol of survival and beauty, Fossils on a Red Flag presents a vision of perseverance."
–JOSÉ ANGEL ARAGUZ, author of An Empty Pot’s Darkness
"Between half-lives and a single, profound swarm, Ettinger speaks in a voice filled with sorrow, longing, and pride.  The poems in this compact collection hammer and pound against the resilient people who have long been America’s forgotten kinsmen, while recalling a state of innocence during a time of conflict. In our time of conflict, these poems are vital signals, urging us to live in grace."
–JAMES BENTON, author of Sailor
"Right away, I was struck by the beauty of the poems in Amelia Ettinger‘s Fossils on a Red Flag, as well as their necessity. These poems of witness tell the mostly unknown history of the island of Culebra in Puerto Rico—its colonization and use for many years as a weapons training ground by the U.S. Navy. Yet Ettinger’s poems also embody the rich natural history of this misused land, with its conch shells and turtlegrass, proving as this book attests over and over: 'Even in the thunder of explosives/ there was time for love.'”
–JAMES CREWS, author of Bluebird and Every Waking Moment
"… In the poems of Diaz Ettinger, as well as those by Jetn̄il-Kijiner, the personal is political and so is the poetry. Diaz Ettinger’s chapbook is art that both delights us and motivates us to live better."
—NANCY KNOWLES, Review from The Poetry Cafe

Excerpt from Fossils on a Red Flag
Queen Conch
 
I
 
I knew birds and turtles,
and where each spawned
the next generation.
So, in cut-off jeans,
 that showed
the tender moons
of my upper thighs,
I went, telescope and binoculars at hand, to a refuge,
with no knowledge of its past nor
the sledgehammer present, I was trespassing.
I had not heard of the red flag at the hilltop,
or post office directives,
or of a Navy,
or the taking of Culebra in 1906.
Again, wrapped in loud youth, unaware
of the tree ducks’ eyes that followed
my unconscious march.
A discarded paper flew
“Culebra para los Culebrenses.”
 
(I have included a copy of the original pamphlet made in 1970s by an unknown artist on the plight of the island).