Mi Boca/My Mouth
My teeth are ugly, jagged things
Stones that cut mountains out of skyscrapers
Scraggly rocks;
they scrape blood from my wrist
Boulders built from stargazers’ bones;
barely bigger than that narrow crevice
my father tried to bridge
on horseback, he bounded between two cliffs
My mother calls it the Ramirez Gap
I crush riots between my teeth
crunching gravel,
a rictus grin of a groaning
[growing] rift
An homage to the barriers she could never cross
A chasm I attempt to cut across,
my feet balance over this fragile bridge
as my abuela cradles her cross
My mother’s English a stumbling donkey
My father fumbles, reins in hand
[reins in his frustration]
frail ropes snap
reins in his tongue, a whip-lash
Fracturing earth threatens to crack
[Fraying patience, I learn to adapt]
My fingers slip as I slide down the canyon
blood scrapes the soles of my feet
I scratch at the cobblestones, a quarry of words unsaid,
a language left incomplete
Sin acento, my voice grinding shoveled gravel
Stiflled, shoving stones in between my teeth
Free falling, the wind shoves me over the cliff-face
Flying, earth-less, nowhere to bury my grief
Conquistador
Oh, you grenade of glory,
You pantomime of patriarchy,
You quick witted conquistador
You know the waters all too well,
You have sailed across the Atlantic eighteen times
and kissed the Caribbean Sea as if you were lover instead of conqueror;
the light dances on the waves, but you are not brave enough to look away
Córdoba: cien centavos
(Córdoba: one hundred cents)
`
there are no castles here
there are spinning quarters,
sixteen thunderclouds clap and shake the coins off course
Crooked highways curve around mountains
your lies twist around your mouth
[my stomach lurches, your humidity suffocates]
I tell you that you are not as human as you think:
you, semi-illiterate;
I have seen the beast in you, the insecurity and unstable beams, when you blink
I am fifty percent nightingale
five percent gecko
two percent eagle
twelve percent some type of tropical creature
twenty four percent animal that likes to tango
and seven percent dustings of desert snow
The jaguar lurks,
people-less, he holds his stolen Aztec mace
an obsidian blade
fire forged and blasphemous
volcano blood
[I am] split open like a firecracker that separates two fingers
smoke attempts to choke my face
I crash, a current of molten lava, I careen, kindle and cook
A child or some lost cousin of mine looks at the sky, sticks out his tongue for a snowflake
How was he supposed to know how ash tastes?
Author’s Note: the Córdoba is the currency of Nicaragua