This article is adapted from AQ’s special issue on the U.S.-Mexico relationship. To receive AQ at home, subscribe here.
Borders
I recognize the signs
of heartbreak
I recognize them
in me
in the ball of twine
four inches in diameter
someone has made
to kill memory
I recognize the signs
now repeatedly
of ancestral sadness
sewn into skin
in ambition to feel
free of sin
I recognize the signs
of worlds imposed
I know I belong
to none of them
Abel Salas publishes and edits Brooklyn & Boyle, an art, literature and community journal based in historic Boyle Heights, on L.A.’s Eastside. A poet and journalist, he also cofounded Corazón del Pueblo, a Los Angeles community cultural arts center and collective.
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Don’t Hold Back
My mother is 21,
conjuring María Félix, smolder
kohl eye.
She is the sound of freeways at rush hour
crashing hips. Hourglassed—an ache.
She wears a beehive of unanswered questions:
Curios, feathers, silences, heart songs, grafted tongue.
Tangerine mouth, pouting
lips. She is engaged to Rubén González.
She is cleaning houses.
She is walking home
late with the moon.
Don’t hold back
She says when she braids my hair
When she rolls tortillas
I roll them into shapes of California.
Her tortillas are as round as records.
When she sings Juan Gabriel
She gives me words to make my dance spiral.
When she chooses me to flip the tortilla and not my sister
Don’t hold back
She wants to call her mother
through invisible telephone wire.
Her lifeline,
a record melted in the sun.
She only knows.
She unravels a thread, motions:
It is good luck when the tortilla bubbles
Originally published in Huizache #6
Melissa Lozano is an MFA candidate at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. She has studied under and performed with Elia Arce in We Carry a Home With Us and The Fruitvale Project.
