The body goes light, as if keeping a piece of paper,
soft and awkward in your arms.
There is a pulse and so you continue.
They are without words or sounds.
You imagine calling a hospital and screaming
into the phone at the ER nurse to put your mother
on the other end. It is night time, isn’t it
always? And you are in a hotel in New York
City, two days past Valentine’s, and
one day past the anniversary, the first year
your parents did not dance around the
room, your mother hovering over your
Father’s shoes as if she were already.
Millicent Borges Accardi, a Portuguese-American writer, is the author of three poetry books, most recently Only More So (Salmon Poetry). Her awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), CantoMundo, the California Arts Council, Yaddo, Fundação Luso-Americana, and Barbara Deming Foundation.
You see what she does not see.
You see through the snow
an abandoned nest
nestled in the heart
of the thorny red
barberry.
Nowhere and everywhere in this town, all day, on the wires
between luck and calamity, the mockingbirds echo-shadow:
siren, horn, and the litany of other shit they hear.
One day, you’ll know why
but for now, step outside, no longer holding my hand -
see past the voids and repetitions,
past the cracked blue shells and blood orange yolk
all on our stoops, all on our sidewalk.
Regardless of the analysis your English teacher posits
about mockingbird metaphors as she looks at you, warmly;
regardless of how, in the a⋂b intersection of her wild venn diagrams,
she writes “separation of children from their mothers” and looks at you - warmly,
hide the nests and hold flat the water. See all the sheets.
What did the president say?
Notice how some teachers don’t notice the very room is breathing.
You did not come here to teach her anything, nor did the mockingbirds.
No one gives away the songs of their hearts.
And you are not ornament inoffensive.
Hear what is. Remember what you can see.
Ruth Irupé Sanabria, a 2018 CantoMundo fellow, has published two collections of poetry The Strange House Testifies and Beasts Behave in Foreign Land. Her poems also appear in What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump and Women of Resistance: Poems for a New Feminism,
The shadow cast from a single lantern is not biblical,
Though it is indistinguishable in proportion. He is
A symphony exploding slowly at first, in shifts &silently.
A meticulously petalled crescendo, brimming with
Vibration. His breath, a plié stolen from the blackness of
Caravaggio; a merlot-lipped recitation of Cavafy under Black lace. The black of scriptures that bleed when you touch
Them. Silhouette as the naked black of an observer on his
Neck. His eyes glister gold-as-riverlight, an expression
Old as the earliest form of wonderment. A pleasury,
A seance, gossamer-white flamelicked and split
Up the center. His vanillin abounds. A furrow beneath
Mourning. A psalm of Achilles’ horses. On his brow,
a covenant with any creator willing to listen.
Roberto F. Santiago is the author of Angel Park (2015)—a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award in Poetry—and LIKE SUGAR (Nomadic, 2020). He received an MFA from Rutgers and MSW from UC Berkeley. Recent work appears in Apogee, Foglifter, and The Ninth Letter. Roberto lives in San Francisco.
She says
Men only need two things: La comida y el culo
between drags of a Newport cigarette that balances
casually between fingertips knowing everything
in a country foreign to your touch is temporary, always
trying to eat but never fed to satisfaction
Tía:
An ephemeral stream that feared anything outside her
5 block borrowed country, her section 8 sky greyed by
the barely-there rays of a New York City sun that she
could never imagine warming her childhood home in
Santiago, that sphere of fire dulled among the rooftops
couldn’t bronze her skin even in summer, she laughed,
bragged about her stove having more passion than Helios
himself, cursed a coñaso at the impotence of small Gods
in this great city that watched newly arrived Cibaeños
and Dominican- Yorks dance bachata to the same rhythm
of a new world caught in their cold smiles
She licked the sweat beading off her lover's brow who
married her cousin for papers, pursed her lips the same way
she had done when she arrived carrying an avocado seed
in her mouth past customs; No one cared to hear her
voice anyway
Mothering was as foreign as English but she continued to
summon her womb, pushing forth the weight of five mouths
her hands couldn’t quiet, their bellies tied to her own empty,
bottle after bottle, first milk then water, lover after lover, first
wind gust then ghost
No one wanted her fracture, her undone seams of a body
with too much to say and nothing but a fist to say it with
Men were the only animals she couldn't slaughter in her two
bedroom apartment where live poultry met its end on the
kitchen counter every Christmas, so she held their throats
during sex, bucking to the pulse of carotid arteries, her spine
singing perico ripiao, the warmth of his jaw caught in her
fingernails, reminded her of eating limoncillos en la marquesina
of Abuela’s casita, the juice marking a slow sway down her chin
Tía:
always hungry, always looking to be fed
cooked enough to feed all the married men in
her building, knowing there are three ways into this
country- water, wind and wound
Peggy Robles-Alvarado is Pushcart Prize nominee, CantoMundo Fellow, and an International Latino Book Award winner. As a tenured educator with an MFA in Performance Studies, she authored Conversations with My Skin (2011), Homage to the Warrior Women (2012) and curated The Abuela Stories Project (2016). Find her @ Robleswrites.com.
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