Desiree Marisol Carcamo

L/enguaje/anguage/Issues

no Forest is quiet, who said it was so?

the Wind plays the trees & their leaves  sh, sh, sh, cla, pum

Birds always gossip, insist on singing

sometimes i hear the Grass whisper that it is too hot during summer:

look at me, I’m dying, more yellow than a fever

when i ask my grandmother what our Cat says

grandmother is the only one who understands– my Cat is speaking

with her tail twitches, her blinks, when she

walks away from me, she is speaking, i’m not making it up–

but my cousins don’t understand, i ask tio, what did she say?

it’s all blank stares, because he doesn’t understand that

his Hamster is more than just mean, maybe she’s lonely

maybe she’s thirsty, wants to walk into next tuesday

to find somewhere– donde me entienden– maybe Cat’s tired of meowing

stupid human, why don’t you understand what I am saying?

in thailand & finland, english is not the language, and in el salvador

Spanish is the language, i love how it rolls up from my stomach

deep within, still off, but closer, the clearest heirloom from the land of my mother

& her mother’s mother, not nahuatl but still closer to my idea of home

close enough for someone who needs a dna test to know their family tree

mestiza, white adjacent, brown during the summer, the girl without a tongue,

with too many tongues, with question marks in their geneology

human caught smack dab in the venn diagram between

race is just another colonial construct meant to erase the people

you come from the colonizer’s child trying to make something new

in California, the cashier looks past me & asks

how would you like to pay, but i wish she said

¿Cómo te gustaría pagar?

my mom’s boyfriend takes me out to sea

we’d talked about it for awhile: swimming lessons

can you take me to swim out in the ocean?

my mom couldn’t do it; she’s not a swimmer, more of a cat:

sun sign leo, she lounges on her dry towel, cringes from icy sea foam

last time she free floated in the ocean, she’d dug her nails into my arm

demanded, why’d you let me go, shivered in puerto vallarta’s cool waves, said, never again

my mom’s boyfriend used to swim in the ocean

back in mexico, back in time, back before he knew

that he could be illegal, that even oceans had laws

at laguna beach, we carry a cooler, hot cheetos, a tent

sand sculptors build a heart of sand among the throngs of people

a now rare sunny california day, noon tide, cloudless sky

bodies, bodies, bodies

warm up to the water: strategic toe dips

resist the waves by jumping as if you’re still a child

reason with the inner, rational fear you shouldn’t swim in the ocean

years ago, that old middle school project that never got off the ground

about giant squid, about all the mysteries that fit in the depths,

how living is accepting all the things you cannot know,

how no one should swim in the ocean, but of course you must

because life is short & life is what you make of it & at least once &

at some point, you and your mom’s boyfriend float on the pacific

while your mom bronzes on the sand, you forget your fear and swim deeper

follow a piece of wood that like you is also learning surrender

even if a capitalist’s life is three hundred worries, urgent emails, business to do

gosh darnit, you will have a day at the beach– you’re middle class:

boneless even when your feet don’t reach the sand; all the privileges

of being first-and-a-half generation american, not full immigrant;

free, because you are successful because of the sacrifices of others

because success is freedom is the ability to float in the ocean

without worrying about rent, about if I can afford the day off, about–

once, a boy told me a story about hands rising from the waves

along tortilla wall, the border wall in the sea by san diego

because people try to swim their way to the american dream too

& when I fall asleep, I dream about the hands, imagine them rising from the deep

but when I wake, all I see are the swooping pelicans diving for their fish