I. an exercise:
the positionality of placeholders
there is something that wants to be said
there is something that wants to be said
there is something that wants to be said
there is something
that wants the dark birth
of words.
she is on a line
the passport holds her up
little blue woven book
little blue book
little blue
little
she
the empire machine is dreaming. the empire machine rolls over. the empire machine wakes up. the empire machine stretches. the empire machine does not have a lover. the empire machine makes coffee. the empire machine goes to work.
II.
I promise you,
that girl she looked
just like my sister
cousin daughter
niece comadre
you know –
la morena
who lives next
to the colmado
that always smells
of raw meat and
plátanos.
III. what she says:
one day I dream myself
on the outside of a flying plane.
I grip a rope twisted through
a loop on the wing, and the
wind scoops everything
out of my mouth.
inside my bones an unborn
old woman is stretching and dancing.
my skin feels too tight.
I return
swallowing Spanish.
Border Control squints
interrogates
x-rays
finally says
welcome home.
I am overflowing
and the taxi driver sees.
ah, you miss your country?
his eyes are soft.
I cannot speak.
(and regarding a bra Made In ______)
I wonder what woman with
a transatlantic face like mine
has worked calluses into her
fingers for the comfort of
nude-colored breasts. nude
being khaki, as in fatigues
or nude being cream, as in
of the crop.
try wearing:
a river
barbed wire
gold
black
dried blood
a harvest
lost languages
a seam
I mean a border
and how will you find
your way home?
and how will you find?
and how?
will you find?
and you how?
how will you?
how you?
how you.
home will find
you and how.
Irène Mathieu is a pediatrician, writer, and author of the poetry chapbook the galaxy of origins (dancing girl press). Her poetry, prose, and photography can be found in The Caribbean Writer, The Lindenwood Review, Muzzle Magazine, qarrtsiluni, Extract(s), Diverse Voices Quarterly, Los Angeles Review, Callaloo Journal, HEArt Journal, and elsewhere. She has been a Pushcart Prize nominee, a Callaloo fellow, a Fulbright scholar, and currently is an editor of the humanities section of the Journal of General Internal Medicine. Irène is the 2016 winner of the Bob Kaufman Poetry Prize; her first full-length collection entitled orogeny will be published by Trembling Pillow Press in 2016.