by Pat Mora
‘No, not this one,’ she’d say
to her daughter.
‘It’s not good enough for her.’
One day, I knelt down on one knee
and asked Grandpa’s mother for
his hand. Everyone laughed
at my good joke.”
My French grandma!
She proposed to my grandpa.
Dialogue: As in prose, refers to the use of alternating voices.
Conversation / Conversación
New here?
Why so sad?
Sad? No hablo inglés.
Oh, but muy bonita.
Ah, tú hablas español.
No. Muy poquito. I’m taking Spanish.
You think I sound funny, ¿sí?
No hablo inglés.
Nada.
Aw, you’ll learn. English is easy.
¿Eee-zee?
See. You’re learning.
Inglés, muy fácil.
Oh, no. Español es fácil.
Inglés es muy difícil.
Maybe I can teach you
English, and you can teach
me Spanish, ¿sí?
No entiendo.
Yo maestro de inglés.
Tú maestra de español.
Oh, so you can laugh.
What’s your name, ¿tu nombre?
Me llamo Morena.
Morena bonita.
We look at one another,
wary, but curious,
her eyes, mysterious,
mine, I hope, solicitous.
Slowly, like the sun rising,
she smiles.
Kissing
When my dad saw us kissing
at the bus stop,
he just drove by.
At home, he said
nothing.
At dinner, he said
nothing
so loud the room sounded
like my heart.
“What?” I snapped.
“What’s happening?”
Mom asked, reading me
like she did when
I was three,
finding
what I couldn’t hide.
Dad stared at me,
and I glared back,
our look-alike eyes
locked for days, it seemed—
maybe people had gone to bed
and gotten up, gone
to school—
while Dad and I tangled in silence.
I felt sleepy and worried.
What if
I dozed and fell off the chair, curled
into a nap right there
by the dining room table
like a child.
What if
my parents looked at one another,
and Dad gently picked me up
like in the old days,
carried me,
but he can’t
carry me now.
Dad slapped
the table.
“Basta. Enough.”
We met halfway.
“Don’t embarrass yourself,”
he whispered into my hair
when we hugged, and I felt
the weight
of carrying me.
Pressure
The first time
he said “You’re beautiful,”
I felt butterflies,
yellow and orange fluttering
on my arms.
When he said “I love you,”
I couldn’t feel
my feet.
“Do you love me?”
he asks today, touching
my arm.
He strokes my hand,
and I become
all skin.
My skeleton, the interior
forms that hold me up,
softens into cream.
“If you love me,”
he whispers,
barely touching my
lips,
“trust me.”
He wants to take me
down to another place,
dark, tangled,
private, just him and me.
“Trust me—
if you love me.”
But I don’t want to go there
yet. What if
I can’t find my way back?
On the Edge
We lived on the edge at high school, circled way out
to avoid their bruises, protecting ourselves from
their stares and snarls at our hair, clothes, tattoos.
To them we were freaks. Know what I mean?
We had our own music, our way of joking,
rushing off on trips so fast we’d forget our wallets,
spending afternoons working on our old cars, laughing
and shouting when the engine would finally catch, and
we’d sail down the street
honking at people who shot us their frowns.
To them we were freaks. Know what I mean?
When Mike died, our music did too.
We hooked arms by the casket,
wearing the concert T-shirts
Mike had made us buy.
We each said, “He was my best friend.”
We talked about how Mike made us laugh,
how we never planned anything,
but stuff always worked out.
Kids and teachers looked at us up there,
still thinking: what freaks.
Know what I mean?
We each had to speak,
but I wanted just to be silent,
for ten years maybe.
On Guard
I know how
to build fences.
I’ve built my borders
for years.
Routinely, I repair
attempted entries
into
my space.
Everyone is suspect,
gray-haired women,
a child’s hand
reaching in,
people disguised
as rocks,
all possible invasions.
Don’t be deceived:
I savor
my isolation,
my dark interior.
Silence, please.
Your opinions
are unwelcome.
Your jabber,
your many tongues
bore me
but will never bore
into my well-guarded
space. All the un-me
is alien. I take pride
in being on guard.
I’m willing to share
my strategies—
threats, barks,
explosions—
for remaining untouched
—in here—
by the world’s
garbage.
The Silence
We met in kindergarten
and used to laugh often when we turned the pages
of our photo albums, our changing selves.
“So, like, is he your boyfriend?”
My sister’s old question. “Boy” an insult,
but not “boyfriend.”
He and I always talked,
conversations that lasted for years,
but we never talked about the prom.
Now prom talk everywhere.
I practiced sounding casual. Trying to laugh,
I finally said, “Want to go to the prom with me?”
And then I heard it,
the silence
unraveling years
of jokes, fears, secrets.
He looked like his mouth had blisters
when he said, “I—I—uh, invited someone else.”
I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream.
I didn’t
“Breathe!” he said roughly.
I turned
and told my reliable legs
to keep moving.
Blank verse: An unrhymed form written in iambic pentameter (iambs are pairs of syllables, th
e first unstressed, the second stressed; penta = five). Each line has ten syllables (five iambs) and can sound conversational. Sometimes, a writer varies the pattern for emphasis as I did in the last line.
Please
I wonder what you do behind hard bars.
I know the “you” the judge will never see.
The family says one day I’ll visit you,
but I’m afraid my tears will make you sad.
Inside myself, I hear such scary sounds.
Someone is gasping softly in my skin.
I think of our last dance. I didn’t know
I wouldn’t dance with you for many years.
They say I have to let myself be mad
that you were selfish and abandoned us,
but what I feel is cold and dark, a pit
I’ve fallen into where there’s not much air.
I tell myself that one day you’ll come home.
I’ll bake a cake so high your jaw will drop.
You’ll smile at me, and we won’t need to speak.
I pray for you at night. Do you pray too?
And do you have a night-light where you sleep?
I dream our prayers can meet high in the stars.
I’ll write you soon and try to cheer you up.
I hope you have some friends, and food tastes good,
and hope the guards allow you walks outside.
Pretend I’m there. We’re walking hand in hand.
Don’t let your anger loose at anyone.
Please. Smile. Sing our songs. Let your good shine through.
Spanish
My mom worried that I was sick
or changing. “¿Porqué estás tan quieta?”
I hurt too much to tell her. I was shrinking
in that school. I couldn’t speak
English.
All my intelligence and feelings trapped inside,
en español. Quiet. I was the newest
so knew no words. All day I listened and looked
down, hoping no one would ask me a question.
I hid so deep inside, I’d lose myself for days,
forget the sound of my own voice.
At home, I was silent more and more, my mouth
too sad to speak.
When I’d hear español, oh!
It surrounded me like a comfort,
una frazada, the syllables soothing
me, slowly thawing my wounded self,
the stranger inside.
Tanka (TAHN-kuh, Japanese for “short poem”): A Japanese form consisting of five unrhymed lines whose syllables are set in a 5-7-5-7-7 pattern. I chose to repeat the form, numbering the sections to convey the passage of time.
Broken Home?
I
Long, sad, first weekend,
my strange room: a cold, white box.
My brother pouts, cries.
Another first: Dad cooking.
Is our home really broken?
II
Two houses, one home.
Birthdays pull us together.
Singing heals our hurts.
Us four, always family,
a home we make for ourselves.
Letter poem: A poem written in the form of a letter.
Dear___,
I write what I can’t say out loud.
I’m trying not to think about you, but
I can’t resist.
My mind drifts to your slow smile,
how it moves
from your lips to your eyes—
or is it the reverse? How it lifts me
from my ordinary self.
Do you ever want to hold my hand?
When we’re talking, and others join us,
when you laugh with them, I feel tangled
up inside, angry. I struggle not to be rude.
I want to be alone with you.
I love our aloneness.
When I listen to music, I imagine
slow dancing with you, and you whisper
into my hair, “You are my one true love,”
and I smile
and know
why people write music and paint
and dance, lifted as if they can fly,
because this ache
crashing inside
needs to be free.
Sometimes, love
becomes a melody
others hum for years.
Pantoum (pan-TOOM, from the Malay word pantun): A poetic form, usually rhyming, composed of four-line stanzas (quatrains). Poets have written variations of the repeating pattern in which lines two and four become lines one and three in the following stanza.
Dumped
I can’t believe you dumped me.
For months, I felt so happy inside.
What a catastrophe!
Now I feel ugly and just want to hide.
All those months, I felt so happy inside.
Was everything you said untrue?
Now I just want to hide
and try to forget I loved you. Still do.
Was everything you said untrue?
“Let’s just be friends.” I hate the words.
I’m trying to forget I loved you and still do.
I ache at the mean rumors I’ve heard.
“Let’s just be friends.” Haunting words.
Me, a lump you dumped, casually.
How I ache at the rumors I’ve heard.
My heart broke, my private catastrophe.
Sestina (seh-STEE-nuh, from the Italian, meaning “sixth”): A fixed poetic form of thirty-six lines that is like a verbal dance. The author chooses six words that will be the final words of six unrhymed lines in six stanzas. The pattern for the repetition is established in stanza one and follows the end-word pattern of 6, 1, 5, 2, 4, 3. Often three additional concluding lines contain all six words.
Questions
When she asked me out for coffee,
I knew she was different.
Her words were funny but lonely.
Her eyes nervously asked questions.
I was looking into a murky well,
but I couldn’t turn away.
Sometimes I wish I could take her away.
We could walk a beach sipping coffee,
and she’d laugh and feel really well
and not start crying. She’d be different.
No one would ask me questions
about being with someone so weird, lonely.
“Save me,” she whispers. It makes me lonely.
My life before that first day seems far away.
Her cutting habit scares me. I ask questions
so maybe she can say what hurts. I offer coffee
with lots of sugar and milk, something different.
She dries her smudged eyes, sighs, “Oh, well.”
I wish we could hold hands by a rocwell
and fling in her thorny wounds, fears, loneliness.
Maybe things with her will never be different.
Maybe I need to pack up and run far away,
but then tomorrow, alone, she’d drink bitter coffee
again, and I’d be asking myself what-if questions.
My counselor asks me confusing questions
about whether I can cure her, make her well,
and what if I hadn’t gone out for that first coffee,
can I really save anyone but me. “But she’s so lonely,”
I say, “and I love her and can’t just turn away.”
I even pray that she’ll wake up smiling, different.
My family says, “Think of college, a new different
life, a clean start.” Maybe a roommate will question
my politics, sign us up for a trip to mountains far away.
Can, should I, forget her, and focus just on me? Well,
I’d miss her too, digging into my skin, lonely
for what I provide, warmth and not just in the coffee.
People say I don’t look well. I stopped coffee
,
but the broken questions just replay, won’t go away.
I want to be different even if I’m lonely.
Old Love
When my aunt died,
my uncle raised his hands
like a prophet in the Bible.
“I’ve lost my girl,” he said,
“I’ve lost my girl,” over and over,
shaking his head.
I didn’t know what to say,
where to look,
my quiet uncle raising his voice
to silence.
My aunt was eighty-seven.
“Listen,” my uncle said, sighing
like a tree alone at night,
“women know.
Every midnight on New Year’s Eve,
when others sang
and laughed and hugged,
your aunt looked at me,
tears in her eyes.
Sixty years.
She knew.
One day, we’d kiss good-bye.”
Villanelle (vih-luh-NEL, plural form of villanella, an Italian country song): This challenging but rewarding form consists of a pattern of nineteen lines—five tercets and a concluding quatrain. Two rhyming refrains braid through the poem, and a second rhyme occurs within every stanza. Many poets have enjoyed varying this pattern.
