Mouth Sores
Inflammation
I.
I try to swallow el calor with a glass of prayer
beads & for years it sears my stomach a hole.
An untreated ulcer scathing the gut. Heartburn.
Indigestion. Inflammation dwelling in the membrane
of my melanin. Smoked swollen joints billow the size
of volcanic rocks. Embered. I carry too much
heat in my body.
II.
Is it el o la calor? I ask Mami in the Texas
summer heat. Blanketed by shade, she says
the heat can be either or.
My native Spanish tongue drags & stumbles
between el o la, la o el always trying
not to cross an artificial border without the right papers.
El calor, I say, when it hacks at my skin,
a slaughter of cells, the Dominican guardia wielding
machetes & damming the river life lines under my skin.
La calor, I say, when it blows damp, an ocean breeze
ready to mother my wounds & heal heat sores
scabbing over stained glass sweat.
El o la I fumble & fall into a hole filled
with the flesh of words I am still acquiring
a taste for. Dulces palabritas from home.
Words that feed my lips childhood stories of people
pinned to walls above altars lit with sage smoke
& candle wax. La o el a tourniquet that stops the flow
of words from resting in my mouth like water.
III.
“Este calor me va a matar,” Mami says & I linger
in summer sun memories bubbling with questions
& self-doubt. Again I ask, “Is it el o la calor?” She simmers
and says, “Just remember, el calor, la calor, is fluid.
Like our blood. Like your Spanglish. Like our bodies
across our borders should be.”
Morir Soñando
“Like a parrot imitating spring,
we lie down screaming as rain punches through
and we come up green”– Rita Dove
I had a dream once:
My machete hands slice open
calcified white green caña.
I milk my tongue into a glass
of homemade morir soñando.
Watch it roll into “r’s” colorado, singing: perejil, perejil.
Lash my sun kissed lips with sugar
to sweeten this cafe con leche skin.
Paint my pupil with the pulp of a banilejo mango
and bathe in seawater sweat singing: perejil, perejil
Cave into the earth that surrounds me.
Fill my flesh with fango. Swallow
the sounds of the island and bloom
from the bones buried beneath. Wake up
wounded. Wake up singing: perejil, perejil.
**
Cutting cane for the general:
Stalks of severed limbs lay bare.
Sea foam spills from salt.
Machetes hack at wounded flesh.
Fill breath to the brim with sorrow.
Bathe the earth in sangre-
Set the field on fire.
Fire to harvest the cane.
Fire to flower the flamboyán
Fire the scent of parsley.
Fire the sound of blade
hitting bone hitting body–
Fire ‘till it swallowed me
crimson-Fire ‘till I die
while dreaming.
Lupus
A wolf bit the side of my face.
Her spit flooded my lungs
& hurricaned around my heart.
She howled at the soft moons
rising behind my wrists & knees.
It echoed in my joints & swelled
between the gums of my teeth.
She chased me every night &
ran me out of breath.
She slept inside my rib cage
& pressed herself against my chest.
I tied her to my bedpost & tried
to feed her ginger, but she clawed
at my kidneys & sucked the bone
marrow dry. A wolf bit the side of my face
& the scar became a butterfly.
(All poems above appear in Jasminne’s recent collection: Night-Blooming Jasmin(n)e: Personal Essays and Poems, Arte Publico Press, 2018)
