Not a Pirate Visa, a Pirate’s Song
José de Espronceda says the sea
is his only country.
I say, what’s the whole sea,
without a mother,
to me?
My father: “Would you spare a few dollars to pay
for my wife’s second attempt at crossing?
I say, Simon says,
freeze! There will be no more dollars
or Bolívares for this trip.
No more bootlegged water.
Let me hand my mother
a real drink.
On the liquor display: Ron Añejo,
Buchanas, Black Label.
I’ve made a gallant ship from this wooden furniture.
Grandma’s embroidered curtains, my sails, I’ll skirt
the English cruiser fleets with my treasure.
I won’t cut through la mar,
mamá, I’ll fly.
Put on my heart-patch! I’m a pirate
holding you kidnapped.
Locomotion
“We’re baby Jesus,” confessed my parents,
adding “There’s no money
for presents.” I cried. They vanished.
Now I’m like a teacher, I sharpen
the #2 pencil of my body,
shaded-in are their daily absences
in the strict homeroom of my heart.
In a box the length of a sarcophagus
they sent me a pogo stick—it arrived
three days before Christmas.
I want to bubble-wrap,
express
delivery myself back to senders.
Leap, jump, hop-off
my sidewalk
yells the earth,
my ex-best friend.
She glances, rebounds me
I hop(e) in place
teeter, stutter
to reach an address
in the north
my spring resilient
projects me sky-up
Buckle Up
Out of a patched-up suitcase, my father sold
Colombian jeans, Colombian girdles,
Chinese blouses in hair salons where women—
Doña Florindas coiled in rolos—knew
my name; how long he’d longed for us; how much
he’d worked. Now with him
after school, I sold clothes, out of a wheezing suitcase
he dragged through Roosevelt’s snow
the hauled avenue, mud.
One day, we make 200 dollars. Proud
and counting, we get inside the car
and warm, me counting, a block down
the cops stop us, our blue Honda Prelude
bats its bat-mobile lights
and it is a woman cop who asks for
my seatbelt.
A ticket. 200 dollars or plus.
She says because we could have crashed
and I could have gotten hurt so bad.
Daddy, seatbelt of my life,
you strapped your arm around my shoulder
as frowning, I buckled up.
Cleft
I wanted to mount that white
horse. His worn blanket of pelt
flogged by those flies. To rent
with 500 pesos
some heft. That morning,
cleft at the cheek,
bucking all spine,
a fish
hurled to a bucket.
In the cockpit, a rooster settling
his pinball heart, the other
hauled off
by the drumsticks.
It was the same horse
I wanted on. My mom
did not let me. I was sulking
when it neighed and reared
for no reason and twice. A
little girl
fell on her back
and missed by some inch
the storm of its hooves.
It would have flattened
out your eyes, busted out
your stomach
my mom said.
Ruminants
My mother’s first English
SCRAMBLED
OVER
EASY
She waitressed at Corona Diner,
my Queen,
her flat-ironed hair glazed
in the fried smell of DONUTS
On the sly, she swallowed German
BACON scraps
FRENCH
TOAST
English
guttural sounds
Leftovers next to napkins—
boogery nasals
whole bocados, vocables,
we’d regurgitate
At night,
we studied a vocabulary
of breakfast
American, our index cards
blank receipt notes where she penned
PAN-CAKE
BA-GEL
YO-GURT
No more Cartilla de Nacho,
but us again on her bed,
my mother, the phoneme /m/
mi mamá me mima
not uddered again
this language, not milk
but a weaning hay feed
Bovine, ruminating
before vowels
we laughed at
BEEF
SAUSAGE
Our jaws sore—
I mimed her
chewing the cud
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Yessica Martinez is a Queens-based poet originally from Medellin, Colombia. A graduate of Cornell University’s MFA program, she identifies as an illegalized person who currently holds Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status. These poems are part of her working manuscript titled Aircraft. Her writing has been published or is forthcoming in The Los Angeles Review, Interim, Willow Springs, and Aster(ix). She is a 2018 Paul and Daisy Soros fellow and a recipient of The Amy Clampitt Fund residency.
✶
Edward Michael Supranowicz is the descendant of Irish, Russian, and Ukrainian immigrants. He grew up on a farm in Appalachia and he has lived in Washington, D.C. and Boston. He studied painting and printmaking at the graduate level. His artwork and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Fish Food, Streetlight, Straylight, Gravel, The Phoenix, and other journals.
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