Jennifer Givhan

The woman in the documentary reaches her hands to the fence      touches her child through an opening De mis manos      dolor     When I was a child      my mama drove me to the swap meet on the other side for a white dress & flowered wreath      my first Holy Communion      the mamas nursing on the roadside     selling chicle con sus manos libres      Abuelo once rode in the casket of a trunk      He rose again on our side of the border which crossed Bisabuela’s family      Look from my balcony      the sleeping sister volcanoes shaped like breasts     I’ve thought about leaving      Shoving a duffel bag & laptop into the car     taking the dog      But these babies I’ve wanted since I was a child      That’s what girls do where I grew up down the road from a landfill in the humid stench of a beef plant & sugar beets     hulled & boiled for their sweet white meat      I found an animal in a trap who’d fought her way through high grasses wasting to carcass in my own backyard & I believe you know what a merciful act means I don’t know the words for the shame I’ve carried The woman in the documentary needs papers to get back to her children     They’d found her in the hospital      without insurance      la migra Mama nursed women who’d run through asparagus fields’ crackling heat      bellies full against the barbed wire they’re still burying like umbilicals      roots on a battlefield if the child’s a boy or the place where tortillas are made for a girl      Don’t you dare say desert The heat is unbearable & I’ve seen them pulling anchors from legs cursing bullet shells      In the hospital facing pig barns & a graveyard      Mama in her scrubs & gloves pulling newborns      bloodied like suicide wrists      Jars of coins for the ferryman & La Virgen burning an altar on my nightstand      Mis manos      Mis hijos Whatever fence I’ve erected from that salted curse in my family’s blood Release us The woman on the screen whispers a prayer Fly us free as birds Sin vergüenza I admit the darkness I’ve swallowed      the hollow inside      Now      who will unpin our hands      & toward sky      upraise them

After Rilke I carried a bowl of menudo into the forest / I carried my bisabuela’s tripas not daring ask whose intestines I carried / con cilantro y radish y cebolla chopped fine / I carried the sewing machine they’d chained her to in the garment district downtown I carried the forest crackling against asphalt where her chanclas burnt & melted so I carried her too / I wore no red / I bore no basket / there was no forest but an avocado tree in the backyard of the house they made her sell to get her Medicare for her diabetes shots / I carried her sugarwater / a hummingbird great-granddaughter I carried her flickering / her black- 
& white-screened / I carried her face / the scars her warped esposo left her granddaughter / carried those wounds through the womb / not wolf but blue-eyed man / I stirred the menudo / my belly the pot / & scalding into the forest I carried / & that tree I chopped down chopped into a boat & carried my mother & my bisabuela across the chile-red sopa the blood-water broth / named her daughter / what forest have we made for her I cannot see / I carried darkness into the forest & sliced it out.