To: Mama [Post Card Poem]

 

Mama,

I am eating the last grains of rice you cooked for me 

It took you longer to make this time 

Your hands quick sparrows
sometimes sharp as autumn wind

are now two knots

each finger swollen into branches

 

You say you are going to light a candle

for Chamuel arch angel of love

You worry that love can't find me
I don’t tell you that I push love away

I don’t talk about

the pain

rising through my chest

like high tide

Pain comes unceremoniously

as you cross the street
knees buckle, under the weight of gravity

lift your leg up onto bus stair

pain topples you backwards

Wash out your favorite mug

it strikes bolting from wrist to elbow

I sob sometimes thinking about her hair

I don’t tell you that

I learned another woman’s body better than my own

slope of her back

her skin the color of packed sand

on her forearm

a birthmark the shape of a candy wrapper

 

I tell you to hold on to me

as we cross the street

Your body has grown small

and it sways in the wind

In the mornings

you make coffee and tell me stories

about being brought up by 3 women

common story in Nicaragua

men leave, women come together

to raise up their children

Your mother was only 16 when she had you

somehow the women manage

Espiritu indomable

 

Out of the front of their home

they ran a convenience store

your tia Elia couldn’t read or write

but knew exactly how much

each customer owed her

In your child handwriting

you wrote out the receipts for her

 

 

Saturday afternoon

we go to Delgado Travel

A poner un dinerito

everyone is brown here

Guayaquil, Managua, San Salvador

Para donde va? Quien lo manda? Y Quien recibe?

Who sends and who receives?

You send money to your God daughter

the one who is named after you

The address you give:

“One block from where the old pharmacy used to be

And half a block east”

No names to the streets

 

Monday 5:00am

year fifteen of working for the DOE

you have gotten up extra early to finish

work, they are testing the kindergarten kids now

You say, it’s a way to push black and brown children to drop out

before they reach the fifth grade

 

I ask if you want me to type your lesson plan

no need to talk about the pain in your twisted up hands

or in my decomposing heart

I begin

Shift

capital

K -i-n-d-e-r-g-a-r-t-e-n

 

-C.Izaguirre