MY MOTHER SAID
My mother said: It seems that it has never occurred to you that it is from your name
civilization descends
My mother said: The darkness in my belly is the only darkness you command
My mother said: You are a dreamer born to turn straight eyes aslant
My mother said: If you could regard the circumstances as extenuating
you would let me off easier
My mother said: Never underestimate the trouble people will take
to formulate truths possible for them to bear
My mother said: You were not fit to live even from the start
My mother said: A woman dug out her mother’s eyes with her fingers
so the mother would be spared the sight of the daughter’s decline
My father said: You have a tendency towards metaphysics
Still I schooled you in the means of production
when your milk teeth were intact
My mother said: Your father lived for the day of judgement
So did your mother, but she was forced to other ambitions
My mother said: In your father’s sleep you are executed together
In your father’s dream you form a genealogy of revolutionaries
My father said: Your mother fed you with imported silver spoons
Your mother was everywhere in your face
frantically combed out the curls
My mother said: For a lifetime I envied your father’s traumas
until I realized that my own were far more remarkable
My mother said: I have spent a fortune on your piano lessons
But at my funeral you will refuse to play
My mother took the dream out of my father’s hand and said:
All this sugar will not make you sweeter
Walk a lap around the house before you take the insulin
My father said: I have lived my life, I have lived my life
I have done my share
Now nothing remains of the halcyon days of youth
My mother said to my brother: Beware of strangers
Remember that you have nothing to return to
should they become dangerous
My brother said: I had such a strange dream
That dawn died in my eyes before sleep had cleared
A humanity of sugar and slaughter
When I bid farewell to the light I knew everything
My mother said: From the division of cells
from a genetic material
from your father’s head
But not from me
My father said: From the clash of civilization
from a fundamental antagonism
from my tired head
But not from her
My father said: If it were possible to compete in martyrdom
your mother would do everything to lose
My mother said: The heart is not like the knee that can be bent at will
My father said: Even the rooster who does not crow gets to see the sun rise
My mother said: But if the hen does not lay an egg she will be served for dinner
My father said: Your brother shaved before his beard started to grow
Your brother saw the terrorist’s face in the mirror
and wanted a flat iron for Christmas
My brother said: Some day I will die in a country
where people can pronounce my name
My brother said: Do not think it is in your power to offer me anything
My father said: Whose father are you rendering
My mother said: Whose mother are you rendering
My brother said: Whose brother is being referred to
My grandmother said: If you don’t finish chopping the vegetables soon
there won’t be any dinner
My father said: To those who have more will be given
and from those who lack even more will be taken
My mother said: Take some more milk before it turns
My mother said: Wouldn’t it be strange to feel
a single night like this one
my language in your mouth
My father said: One spoonful for the executioners
one spoonful for the emancipators
one spoonful for the hungry masses
And one spoonful for me
My mother handed the glass to her mother and said: Now we are even
Here is the milk back
My grandmother said: Your mother descends from the rising sun
She was named after the flower bud since she was born in spring
Your mother named you after a warrior to prepare you for winter
My grandmother said: During spring in Marghacho mint grew along the streams
Does the poem you are writing reveal any of this
My grandmother said: You snot-nosed little mutt
Come here and I’ll take your measurements and knit you a wool sweater
My mother said: If we meet again we will not let on that we knew each other
when you were hungry and it was I who carried the milk
My brother said: Black milk of dawn, we drink you at night
The past is an assault never to be completed
My mother said: Write like this
For my opportunities my mother sacrificed everything
I must be worthy of her
everything I write will be true
My grandmother said: Write like this
Mothers and languages resemble each other
in that they incessantly lie about everything
My mother said: All families have their stories
but for them to emerge requires someone
with a particular will to disfigure
My mother said: You distort the injury with your unfortunate lie
There is a muteness that cannot be translated
My brother said: There is always something imperfect that remains inescapable
There is always something incomplete missing
My mother said: Your family will never recover from the lie that binds
My father said: Your family will never return to the rooftops when it cools down
My brother said: Your family will never be resurrected like roses after a fire
My grandmother said: There is a time for everything under the sun
time to return to the rooftops when it cools down
My grandmother said: Pistachios for the toothless
rosaries for the godless
rugs for the homeless
and a mother for you
My father said: Jobs for the jobless
wages for the wageless
papers for the paperless
and a father for you
My brother said: Cables for the wireless
organs for the bodyless
transfusions for the heartless
and a brother for you
My mother said: Oxygen for the lifeless
vitamins for the listless
prostheses for the limbless
and a language for you
My mother said: I will reclaim what belongs to me
You will meet death robbed of language
Speechless you came, speechless you will return
My father said: I wrote of bread and justice
and as long as the starving could read
the font did not matter to me
My father said: The serif pricks my fingers
My father said: How much resistance can human fat bear
before the lashes of the whip become permanent
My father said: If you forget the alphabet
you will find it on my back
My father said: Only when you forgive the one who has turned you in
will you know the meaning of violence
My father said: There were those who were executed at dawn before sleep had cleared
My mother said: There were those who had to pay for the bullets
to bury their daughters
My mother said: Into what victor’s night did this victory throw us
My father said: Your uncle was there on a crackling phone line
Your uncle refined his metaphors with every lash of the whip
My brother said: Do not bury me here
Bury me where the lashes of the whip are virtual
My uncle said: You will forget everything
except memory, which you will always remember
I remember that before the war the soldier chewed with my teeth
The agitator screamed with my throat
My uncle said: For my sloping shoulders
for my constant smile
For this pile of rocks that was once my house
My uncle said: Is there a puddle where war has not washed its bloody hands
My uncle said: There were those who were executed at every sunrise
There were those who remained and saw the sentences carried out
My mother said: Why do they invoke god from the rooftops
Have they forgotten it was god who held the whip
when their mothers were tortured
