• A Conquistador's Currency, Echoes from the Quarry

    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
     

    Gabriela Orozco
    Grade: 11

    School Without Walls Shs
    Washington, DC 20037

    Educator(s): Jan McGlennon
    Jan McGlennon

    Awards: Poetry
    American Voices Award, 2020
    Gold Medal, 2020

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