Mija: Poems from the Mother Wound, Part 1

Immigration and identity in first generation Americans

Photo by Boston Public Library on Unsplash

A few years ago I started a chapbook about my mother, a Colombian immigrant, and how her longing for her country and culture affected our childhood.

On my mother’s side I am a first-generation American. My father, however, was a Montana cowboy whose ancestry was mostly English, Swiss, and German. Because of my multiethnic identity, I am often unsure of the spaces I can claim. I often hover in the shadow of my imposter syndrome, worrying that I am not enough. A name like Webster doesn’t exactly scream Latina, but this is how I have always identified. My mother was my primary caregiver, and I grew up speaking both Spanish and English in the home. I grew up eating arepas and yucca and platanos. Other than my mother’s stories, these were the only instruments of teleportation to my mother’s culture and country.

My Spanish is now terribly rusty and embarrassing. But I can still understand it well. I live in an area where there’s a large Latine, Spanish-speaking community, which gives me some sense of familiarity and community. However, I have only ever met one other Colombian.

Never having been to Colombia, I feel some shame for not having made it more of a priority. I have lived most of my life in poverty and to this day, I have never owned a passport. But I’m finally in a place in my life where I can make travel a reality. I know that I will not have a sense of fullness and understanding of my identity until I have a chance to visit, and hopefully, meet some of my relatives. I have already missed the chance to meet my grandfather, who died when I was about six years old, and my three uncles.

Some of these poems I’m sharing have been published elsewhere. “Features of a Map” was recently published by MER. Three have been featured in a small, regional lit mag, and won first place in a poetry contest. In this post, I will be sharing just the first round.

I have sent this off to various chapbook publishers with no luck, so I decided I would share them here and honor the stories in my blood I have yet to demystify.

A Memory Made of Gold

You call me mija and querida 
while you grind your country’s sand
between your teeth,
and tell me how easy it is for
mothers to leave and never return.

You have brothers and primos
waiting for you. While you fry arepas, 
I imagine the waves off the shores 
of Barranquilla spiriting you away from me. 
I grip the strings of your apron.

You tell me one day, under the ginkgo tree, 
that your country beckons, and I must choose. 
But the yellow leaves drip like gold on the 
still of my lap, and I am small, and only yours.

You want me to chase down your 
memories with you, your dreams of home. 
I thought I was your home, but I am 
the cinder blocks tied around your ankles.

You tell me to choose:
Conmigo, o con tu papa?
I run my fingers through a pile 
of fresh cut grass, 
and listen to the sound of my father 
mowing the backyard. 

Finally, I point to you. 

You smile darkly as I scratch the earth 
beneath my thighs. I imagine the plane, 
the unfamiliar land and people. 
I imagine never holding your strings again. 

But you relinquish me 
to the disappearing shade, 
the taste of your leaving 
still fresh on my tongue.


Departure

Not me at five years-old 
tracing the contrails like an ellipsis 
of you in the sky, and not me
hiding under the kitchen table 
wondering, How long is a month? 

Not me pinching my belly when
I missed you, little half moon marks, 
my first tattoos.

Not me imagining strange children 
in a strange country sitting 
on your lap, while I, too, am a child.

Not me somersaulting inside 
the dark fairytale of a mother void.
Not me asking, “How many more days?”

And not me carving the hours 
into the dark meat of my thighs, 
using a second-hand teddy bear 
to muffle my cries.

Not me racing towards you 
on the tarmac, baffled by your perm, 
your darker skin, your arms wide
as a finish line, and me, the scissors 
cutting through the ribbon.

Not me unguarded at the islands
of your feet, but me at forty-seven,
nearly grandmothered, buoyant
and storm resistant. 

Not me, tousled and whirling
in your tempest, but me 
un-belonging,
me un-wombing from 
the albatross of you. 

Not me anchored to your rotting ship,
but me with my lap dog, and my books, 
my orphan smile, unmothered, 
unmoored from your imminent wreckage. 
Sackcloth and Ashes

O how you ripened–
blissed out in your red Radio Flier
un-girling yourself, topless and
seven, eyes shut and your eyelids
peeling back the orange glow.

Your tan feet hung
over the edges and your dog
licked your hand, 
and the country music blaring from
the trailer next door registered 
no more than the breeze
between your toes.

Nothing penetrated your stasis–
until your mother found you
bare-chested and clueless,
her figure eclipsing the sun,
you felt the sting of her belt
before you heard her yell, “¡Sucia! 
Do you want men to look at you?”

And you wrapped your arms
around your non-existent
breasts, buried your face in the
floral brown couch and
bit your bottom lip until
it bled, like an act of 
penance, a hope for
absolution.

Features of a Map

What does it mean
to be called,

Hija de tu vida, 
“daughter of your life”? 

Does it mean,
I will taste your homesick
rage, each day, in every 
Café con leche you make?

Does it mean,
I will kneel for your remedies,
even as they cause
my knees to bleed?

Does it mean we are
blood-sealed, and trauma bound, 
each contraction an oath,
an ancestral burden?

Does it mean,
I have a twin, 
Hija de mi muerte,
“Daughter of my death”?
Do you sometimes
mistake me for her?

Does it mean,
I am a skinwalker, 
embodying familiar 
streets from home?

Does it mean,
when I darken in the sun,
I become your Cartagena,
your Medellin?

Am I your new country?

Hija de mi cuerpo…
“Daughter of your body–”

Meaning, I was born blue,
born foreign and foreigner,
wearing a rope of flesh & blood
like a choker around my neck.

Meaning, when I was born
you forced your fingers
between my ribs and pulled out
a stone shaped like a continent.

Meaning, when I learned to walk
I wore the river Magdalena on my back,
my brown body an unsteady map
tripping over latitude and longitude. 

Meaning, I fell from the 
borrowed sky of an alien country 
and I have been falling inside
its rusty apology ever since.


Because My Mother Said I Left Her to the Wolves

This is how I leave you:
I leave you to your unbecoming.
I leave you unopened and nameless. 
I leave to your heart, and its ominous un-beating.
I leave you to the never-thoughts of a never-life.
I leave you to the guardians of the unborn and unraveled.
I leave you to the ghosts I’ve coughed up since, 
and the full moons they wander.
I leave you without apology, and without debt.
I leave you unwhole, and unattached.
I leave you wrapped inside a secular prayer for second chances.
I leave you unknowable and endless.
I leave you in the cities I drag behind,
their diesel scents and muscled sounds.
I leave you to the mornings I stayed in bed too long.
I leave you to the wolves, howling each note 
of your quickened departure.
I leave you over and over again, 
to the un-disaster of this other chosen life. 
The Land of Youth

I have died this way before.
On my way to my mother’s house,
listening to a metallic voice on the radio, 
clear then ambushed with static. 
My ghost takes the wheel. 

The drive is pointed past-ish, 
and comfort ridden. In my mother’s
kitchen I’ll feign warmth, forget I have 
better places to haunt. 

The scent of her arroz con pollo
Sticks to my dead end clothes, 
my paisley and my wool.  
I'll mutter something under 
my non-existent breath.

Caught. I’ll freak out on Death 
and I’ll freak out on Alive. 
Each time, this is the one I choose. 
Let me die like this: somewhere 
I can remain beautifully stunted. 

Where change is barred at the door 
and the world slips off my shoulders, 
and my skeleton dances unburdened. 

My mother calls for me,
begs my specter to be fresh at her table.