Tongue Memoir
after Gloria Anzaldúa
To live in the borderlands is to know
ghosts,
means
you start hearing voices in inner ears and outside voices in
outside streets in mid-
context.
despues de eso, eres solo.
When learning to conjugate in rote
codes not vena cava pumpingbirthrightsangreblood
codes and
those words
when I'm bringing them back to life in flashcards i can hear
them whisper parece que
you've been gone a long
time, mija grown a little bit older tus labios han hecho cambiados
that your tongue muscle don ’t
recognize maybe you've been twice
conquered.
parece que you've been hiding palabras under
your tongue again
until they dissolve.
To live in the borderlands means
you're constantly having a stroke in
one language or another-
I reach to say "i see it between us”
this tongue action entre teeth instead
producing
verlo.
To live in the borderlands means
sometimes they see it in you and invite
you in: que quieres comer?
sometimes they don't, and they don’t
believe you and you are hungry.
To live in the borderlands means
you remember what it was like to ask
for love in another language
but now, in a stale cavity of
malformado "r"s, you only know how to want.
This tongue that thrashes for misshapen
words to sound like rrosas is my borderland
I have been pouncing and painting and
acrobat flipping in machinic English.
But this idioma, this lengua, gurgles
half-thoughts,
still waits somewhere in an acidic
stomach pit.
But each time it gets called up to read
this tongue slashing of texture,
this brain betrayal dam and body malfunction
does not compute
quiero un
entendimiento
does not compute.
The
Beginning
para
mi Abuelito
A mile in his shoes
translates into hundreds,
nestled in a rust brushed
truck bed,
following the guidance
of the North American Moon.
Eardrums resting upon the pulses
of his shoelaces.
Dreams tucked into dirt crusted soles,
blanketed in chaotic
adolescent onyx curls.
The night,
a song of the dreamers,
their backbones clanking
on clapboard to the give of
potholes.
America awaiting their arrival:
open arms that once curved
like Kerouacian roads.
[Where am I supposed to put this
Melanchology this
Misguided Machismo this
Miseducated Suburb Mentality
this mental-fuck mercury leaking out of crushed through glass?
All these times I’ve shamefully bitten into my tongue finding
the appropriate poem for ignorance-
spoken like a dough eyed shy-bird should.
Where am I supposed to put these
wives’ tales these superstitions these Banda beats this
hybrid hunger for history
ancestor blessings, my honest attempts at consuming the peppery mountains between us?
Serafin, you didn’t dirge your denim in the earth, memorize every cow stench fruit vegetable
and mineral on the California coast roadside,
damage your eyesight reading Sal-Paradise and Steinbeck in the dark,
dream of your first born son becoming a doctor,
teach your granddaughter about Rivera’s back breaking calla lilies so she could be smart
and go to college
and forget you
in the bottom line in
someone else’s idea of
la historia]
So quickly
we forget
the vessel of our origins,
Always mistaking the beginning
of what
ever was
as the parachute of our own
lungs,
the primal scream
our mothers longed to hear
and understand.
Sheets
We return
from the hospital,
only the
sweep of passing cars
while our
tongues freeze to language barrier ridges.
We can’t
talk about it.
A blush
crystal rosary
swings
in the back of the car.
From
cheekbones to forehead,
we are
traffic-lit mirrors.
In their room,
she sits
on pilling blue flannel.
Beside
her,
a deep
sheet dimple
of fifty
years
he left
it cold
tonight
somewhere,
sterile linen
is warm.
Esta
noche
she
shares her bed with the dust-coated
plush
animals from my childhood,
the
aftershave ghosts,
and
me.
BIO
Crystal Salas is a spoken word poet from
Southern California. She received her B.A. in Literature from the
University of California, Santa Cruz in 2012. Her work has appeared in
The Moorpark Review & Chinquapin (print) as well as in her first
chapbook, The Body Memoir, which she sewed together herself. She is the
co-founder of Atomic Tangerine Press, which curates “Poetry Solves
Problems”, a bi-monthly literary variety show/community based in Los
Angeles. This is her first online publication.
website: www.littlebirddigs.com