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Mary Anne Rojas


after "Miss Celie's Blues"

your’re right, I know nothin’
about this thing I call me--how
I want to crawl out of my coffee skin
full of yelling and show the world
that love is a body full of knots,
like tumbleweed, like a bag of barbwire.
your’re right, I know nothin’
of home, where the dance of my
body breaks like the tease of a syllable
after the harsh wind lulled me to speak.
I taught myself my name once. I found
it under my tongue talking back to nothing,
as if I owed myself something more,
as if my accordion breath wanted to
escape the music of my throat, pry
open the wind with broken sound
and left over accent. But--
your’re right, I know nothin’
about this thing I call me, a home
where an empty belly bellows the
itch of a fleeing name like a run away
mouth, afraid of quiet when the
windpipe is nothin’ but a whistle
from a faraway echo. but--
your’re right, I know nothin’
of my name.

October  ☊

 that is not true. we become full, crowed like a
 bowl of rice. we become unconcerned with
 movement, moon over who we could be and
 do nothing about it. the mattress begins to
 obsess over your body. you let her. fascinated
 with how someone can seduce the stillness
 out of you. the fridge is empty and you are
 convinced you ate everything. in the mean
 of night, you roam the studio apartment
 like un espiritu left behind. you prefer not to
 bother the light with your inconvenience.
 instead, you contemplate your study desk like
 a surgeon ready to give bad news. the pages of
 poetry are just used instrument now, idle in a
 desert of pencils. 

 one day ☊

one day i will have a good day,
enough to call my own doing--
my fault for everything going
so well. i will call no one nor one
thing a savior, but my courage.
i will make me survive, become
survivor of my mess and dirt. no
more days to pick up a day of dirty
work. i will be worth too many
days for just one. one day. i will
recall the teetering of a smile, sincere
and relieved of faulty attempt to
be mine. it will dance on my face
like the hesitance of a tear, unafraid
to admit it comes from broken,
misbehaved behind skin, so i will
let go—set awake a filthy wanting.
to be a good day—unkempt and       deserved.

On Memorizing the Obituary

Mama opened the closet and pointed at the yellow one, esa —that is the one I want to be buried in. As if her closet is a display case of unfinished memories. The dress. The shoes. The scrarf. The lingering smell of kitchen in the crease of a shirt. We can tell a lot about a woman interrupted in her sleep—a fragile departure like the disappearance of a smile.  She hopes to die quietly, like an uninvited wind through the crack of a door. She likes yellow. It reminds her of Sunday mornings in Las Charcas de Azua: barefoot and hungry. Like a dead mother’s closet. Like trying to decide what color lipstick should a woman wear when she doesn’t plan to return home.  I should have taken notes the times she would button up my pale shirts for school. What a coincidence—getting ready for the day is inviting death without a time in mind. Mama used to wear a yellow sun dress, hemmed by her aging fingers. Her hair was from the fifties—thick curls dancing at her shoulders while my grandfather looked at her as if only the wind can complement her skin.  How do we mourn skin? How does someone become unhoused from her flesh? I assume her bones need a dress, too. She used to be in love. She told me about love, how it consumes you, like the ache of a wound, inevitable to remember where it hurts. In the photos, mama wears a slight smile, tilted to the left, where my grandfather would always sit like a child running away with balloons; he took her smile when he left. Now, I search her closet, as if this is some kind of trick, like the whiff of coffee in the morning when you wake up alone—so familiar, as to imply company is permanent. This must be how an obituary is memorized—repeating the dress, the shoes, the scarf--the yellow one, how the words make sense when silence falls like a bed sheet over a mattress overwhelmed in evanescent shadows. I am starting question what mama would prefer to sleep in, a suitcase or a casket. This is not something we have answers to; we quietly just choose the dress, make sure the shoes can travel long distances, like an apology to the dead from possessions gathered in dust. But this is not something we learn to do—to open closets as if death is neatly hung on a hanger, waiting to be worn for the right occasion. We simply, get ready. For school. For a doctor’s appointment. For a wedding. And like a closet, filled with stillness—I wait for the day, to wear a yellow dress, like mama. I will accept that the day comes like opening a closet filled with memories on a hanger, dancing in dust.

on Listening

as if I watered your mouth to grow. like an empty page  
your chin curtseys to a vacant room where silence is a
child’s first word. your tongue, a wrinkling pride, how it
gathers dust in a body of air. you borrow your breath
tonight from past winds from your past skin like a
promise to live one more day. you, the courage to sing
me the blues of guilt, the song of a dead bird’s windpipe,
plead for affirmation, for the humidity of my presence
to be real. I am listening because I, too can pretend there
is nothing else to loose, humiliate myself in the convenience
of sound. Difficult to ignore your separated teeth like lined
up soldiers, you become your own target, a shooting range
lost in smoke. I must forgive your stories of street nights
populated with metaphors: after the blunt, after the fucking,
after  the car accident, after the women you bruised, after
blaming me for everything I did not have. I listen still. during
hot tea and fishbowl eyes, I stuff my skin with grief, save it
for later, like skip opening the curtains today, like half an  orange,
like a new dinner table, like an I love you to grandmother--
like what is frequent laughter after seventeen homes, as though
honesty requires more than you. Your lips, dance like the
silhouette of a bird’s wing amidst a fog; who will you be
after this, after the air has cleared from the attempt of your
voice. So I confess a foreign smile to you, one given to me
far away inside of me, one that thanked me for taking it. do not
thank me for listening. thank you.

​
Picture
Picture


​Mary Anne Rojas' profile

you will want to avoid it  ☊

you will want to avoid it
but someone you love will
eventually hurt you
you will want to hang each
breath on a clothesline
watch the sun exhaust the
effort each gasp came from
but this will not be enough
to calm the wound, to stop
the weeping. You will believe
every part of you is a plane
crash, midair against
thousands of birds- each
feather will need a funeral.
in between prayers for air
you will remember how
you brought him the sun
in tea cups and late night
massages, how the wrinkle
of his smile resembled the
circumference of a sliced
lemon. he will not give you
a straight answer to why
your company is not needed
anymore. but you will not
accept it. you will remember
how you fight for your black
skin, protect her from the evil
world of oppression. You will
travel back to your first rally,
how you chanted vigorously
for a better world-a different
kind of love, a new love that
would sustain everything
around you. and for that, you
will remember you need people.
he will suddenly look like a people.
the mirror will try to convince you
that you fail to love another.
you will disagree. the clothesline
suddenly will stop quivering and
you will call him. you will fight
for the good love. ask for an answer.
and remind him that you love
yourself more at that moment.
and hope to always know when
you need to love yourself, bring
the fear out of each tear like
the spill of blood from an opened
cut. you will not get aggressive with
silence, but stand above sound like
that something that wakes you
up each morning without an alarm-
your body will know when the light
arrived.

Somewhere~

across country one day,
we will hear of your fingers
travels, a piano on fire, and
frozen night whiskey shots--
you will remember me when
the smoke happens, when
what is left, a neglected smile
tilted to the right in effort
to swing a note stuck in
the crease of your cheek. on
a cold night, in the middle
of a fire, the wind will remind
you of poetry, of how you
wish you had my words
again, in the middle of a bar
full of slurred speech and
sweaty fingers—I would
have invited you for coffee
then, to make music out of
ears and a mouth full of
words ready to give you
a new note for a new wind
while the world cried around
our smile. Smoke would have
happened somewhere across
country. I suppose I am not
music to your blueberry eyes
and egg yolk skin whose
fingers dance like white
and black tuxedo on the
keys of a piano. I want to
tell you, I taught myself a
music note, tucked it
behind my throat like
a saved breath for a night
with you dancing across the
wind of this country as if
all music was made out
of our fire. but continue.
keep playing for girls who--
do not have my words,
and mistake the sound of
smoke with a frozen night.

on Showing

morning’s waking eye,
stuck to begin the again
of day—like the courage
of window plant flutter and
green.  lemon squeeze kiss, and
mama lights the kettle with
freckled palms and onion
eyes, she hands me her habit--
a kitchen graced in olives and
cilantro, the Sunday tea is a crooked
syllable waiting to walk away with
a word—she teaches me how to
show I love you for the first time.
a smile, a brief vacation from loss,
fleets her mouth like a flock of
smoke, dangling in some ally orange
peel of sorrow, where the bruise
spreads like tablecloth with
accent hands, a surrender that
saves her from humility, desperate
for voice, her body hugs me like water--
a hold out of rain and tease. I drink my
tea with kiss, please
. Mornings the
wind pulls the smile from face; I
stand with skin up straight, unknot
the wound of silence, woman to girl--
mama is how I show.

Comments?

***

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