Water & Blood

Whenever I Start to Hate My Reflection, I Think of Good Things That Are Brown

soil

my sister

almonds	

my mother’s eyes

wood

my old Lincoln logs

vicuña

my birth country’s national animal

chocolate

my late cocker spaniel Charlie

leather

my first Volvo

brownies

the name of my dream college

violin

the piano my nephew plays

autumn

the power movement of the ’60s and ’70s

cinnamon

the pride I see in San Antonio

bread

the word I don’t see in the Census

acorns

the color I see in the mirror

Knight

     Arms and Armor, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, New York

Because I never had a father,
I peer into the steel visors
of your hollow helmets, 
as if doing so I could figure out 
which one of you to call Papá.
Beneath metallic sheen,
there is an emptiness.
Beneath my brown skin,
there is a darker void.
What to fill it with?
Better one of you than none.
I hug the iron and steel.
I hug the coronel and blade.
And feel the father inside the armor.
And the protection 
he never afforded me, too busy trampling small bodies 
the same color as mine.

 

Water & Blood

Anytime I stand at the ocean’s edge, 
wiggle my brown toes in light sand, 
I fear not the undertow. Neither 
jellyfish nor sharks. Instead, I spot 
Pizarro’s caravels. From their gullets 
emerge horseshoed hooves. 

As other beachgoers plant parasols—
colorful, bright, and striped—
all I see are armored, bearded men. 
In native sand they thrust the flag 
of Spain, their greed as great
as the finned man-eaters’. 

Nearby a group of small children 
build a giant, elaborate sandcastle. 
Though I admire collaboration, 
my hands and jaw still tighten
when picturing Spanish castles,
the cathedral atop Inti’s shrine. 

And yet, I cannot help but finger 
the small crucifix at my chest.
Chained around my neck,
my silver savior whispers,
urges me to forgive Pizarro.
What of the conquistador in me?

But it’s hard to grant absolution, 
seeing boots of brass disembark, 
meet bare feet they’ll later shackle. 
Or gloved hands grasp for gold.
Baskets of silver and emeralds, too,
cradled by arms as dark as mine.

Far easier is it instead, much better 
does it feel, to picture caravels 
smashed by waves, slivered 
cork-oak afloat in foam, waters
turned crimson by shivers of sharks, 
littered with greaves and gorgets, 

each chewed, sinking, lost

In Learning Another Language, You Sometimes Give Up the First

Were they in Spanish—my first words? More 
than mere babble? 
To whom were they addressed? 
Maybe God. Myself. 
Maybe the NICU nurses. 
The woman who birthed me.
Would that I could recall! 
Who to help me remember?
No psychoanalyst, surely:
Tell me about your mother.
Which? La morena?
Recount a recent dream.
I remember only nightmares.
Your earliest memories?
Each blank as vast,
white as the terrors the Inca dreamt, recorded 
without an alphabet.