Hispanic Heritage Poets for National Poetry Month (HuffPost Latino Voices)
Here is a short list of some of everyone's favorite poets -- please help us complete the list by suggesting other names in the comments below ... read more
Christmas, 1970 BY SANDRA M. CASTILLO We assemble the silver tree, our translated lives, its luminous branches, numbered to fit into its body. place its metallic roots to decorate our first Christmas. Mother finds herself opening, closing the Red Cross box she will carry into 1976 like an unwanted door prize, a timepiece, a stubborn fact, an emblem of exile measuring our days, marked by the moment of our departure, our lives no longer arranged.
Somewhere, there is a photograph, a Polaroid Mother cannot remember was ever taken: I am sitting under Tia Tere’s Christmas tree, her first apartment in this, our new world: my sisters by my side, I wear a white dress, black boots, an eight-year-old’s resignation; Mae and Mitzy, age four, wear red and white snowflake sweaters and identical smiles, on this, our first Christmas, away from ourselves.
The future unreal, unmade, Mother will cry into the new year with Lidia and Emerito, our elderly downstairs neighbors, who realize what we are too young to understand: Even a map cannot show you the way back to a place that no longer exists.
I suggest Sandra Castillo for her moving poems on leaving Cuba and her childhood memories.
ReplyDeleteChristmas, 1970
ReplyDeleteBY SANDRA M. CASTILLO
We assemble the silver tree,
our translated lives,
its luminous branches,
numbered to fit into its body.
place its metallic roots
to decorate our first Christmas.
Mother finds herself
opening, closing the Red Cross box
she will carry into 1976
like an unwanted door prize,
a timepiece, a stubborn fact,
an emblem of exile measuring our days,
marked by the moment of our departure,
our lives no longer arranged.
Somewhere,
there is a photograph,
a Polaroid Mother cannot remember was ever taken:
I am sitting under Tia Tere’s Christmas tree,
her first apartment in this, our new world:
my sisters by my side,
I wear a white dress, black boots,
an eight-year-old’s resignation;
Mae and Mitzy, age four,
wear red and white snowflake sweaters and identical smiles,
on this, our first Christmas,
away from ourselves.
The future unreal, unmade,
Mother will cry into the new year
with Lidia and Emerito,
our elderly downstairs neighbors,
who realize what we are too young to understand:
Even a map cannot show you
the way back to a place
that no longer exists.