Two Poems
BIO
Dr. Melissa Castillo Planas an Assistant Professor of English at Lehman College. She is editor of the anthology, ¡Manteca!: An Anthology of Afro-Latin@ Poets, co-editor of La Verdad: An International Dialogue on Hip Hop Latinidades, the author of the poetry collection Coatlicue Eats the Apple, and co-author of the novel, Pure Bronx. Her current book project, forthcoming with Rutgers University Press’ new Global Race and Media series, A Mexican State of Mind: New York City and the New Borderlands of Culture, examines the creative worlds and cultural productions of Mexican migrants in New York City. To learn more: www.melissacastilloplanas.com
My body is a scar
He traces the wounds of my body in wonder
Your pain threshold is incredible.
Pain-
I’ve lost count of the number of times I asked someone to scar my body
I don’t remember when it stopped hurting
Maybe I started running so long
When I stopped feeling the needle
Look forward to that 20 mile ache
How legs feel like knives are carving at my thighs
Your pain threshold is incredible.
Threshold-
By mile 23 the aching stops
I smile again - endured again
Another medal for the collection
Another memory I’ll soon diminish
Like the books dates I dream will
cascade the length of an arm
I realize, it’s not a threshold it’s an addiction.
Addiction-
that the same giddiness that marks a new tattoo is no different then those last 3 miles
That I don’t just endure pain, I enjoy it.
That I don’t just collect medals and tattoos but insults & critics
That maybe I enjoy depression
a vacation of the mind from thinking
about this fucked up world and my place in it
my superpower and my kryptonite
My addiction to pain is spectacular or spectacle I can’t tell the difference -
I think of the spectacle of spectacular violence we are witnessing in our streets
Black deaths as painful as they are public
Child murder as tragic as it is preventable
Children stacked like fruit baskets
like legos
a border turned into containment
Containment en a desierto
Where dreamers go to die
The death of dreams is violence too
Mama es mi cumple
Cumplo cinco
Quiero pastel
En America habrá pastel
Y navíos
Navíos más grandes
Cargados de comida y agua
Mamá estás allí
O estás allá
Mamá y donde estás?
Mamá ya no me quieres?
Ya no eres mi mama?
It’s more than a 1950 mile wound
It's more than a fence dividing a familia
a pueblo
It’s a line
a lie
discarded in production
or destruction
forgotten
in the containers
of our American Dreams.
He traces the wounds of my body in wonder
Your pain threshold is incredible.
Instead I wonder,
Are we a nation of addicts?
I am Gloria
(For Gloria Anzaldúa/ after I am Joaquin)
I am Gloria
split in a world of borders
spit out by a gringo society
confused by my Mexicanidad
told I don’t fit
In this land
or this land
My father
a pillar of struggle
My mother
a stoic survivor
and I
caught in the fence
of cultural survival
How do I sustain a culture they say is not mine?
How do I sustain a culture they say is criminal?
split
cut
pieced back together
spit
caught
I heal again
this wound is scabbing
breaking
again with every racist tweet
I cry for a culture I can never fully know
I cry for a culture under attack
In the zocalo
I dream of another life
One unencumbered by borders
One without those zebra stripes
Marking me always
As other
In the zocalo
I dreamed another life
The one where you stayed
I wonder if I exist without borders
I cry into the Rio Grande
flowing in my veins
cut as they might it flows
rich & red
reminding me always that
I am here
I am her