Mariah Salazar-Solórzano

I Want To Raise Spoons To Your Lips                                   

I started cooking dinner for my family
when Laura left. I was twelve
searching for recipes on my iPod 
touch. By nineteen, I was over it.

Gripped knives
under hot, soapy water 
when my brothers patted my back 
for that night’s starch, meat, and green.

Shoveling, chugging, ravaging.

Cold stovetops. I’ve been eating deli paper
-wrapped food for years, but yesterday
I gazed at the stainless
steel and wooden icons in the kitchen.
Prayed to feel my hands on their skin 

and yours on mine––as I frost 
a carrot cake, toss boneless 
wings in a tangy
barbecue sauce, and stir 
strawberry pulp into lemonade.

Tasting, sipping, savoring. 

I want to cook dinner for my family again,
but first I’d like to make you
a part of it––the cooking,
the reconciliation, the picture 
captioned “mis hijos”
on my mother’s Facebook.

13 de Enero

2 0 0 1   S a n t a   T e c l a ,   E l   S a l v a d o r 
Question: Can you buy your way out of spontaneous disasters? 
Answer: 
It was a quiet Saturday for Ines’ children 
3,000 miles away from the rumbling beneath their mother’s feet, 
the news wouldn’t reach American T.V.’s for a few more hours.
Thirty minutes till noon, maybe she was plucking floater beans from a pot
in Las Colinas, when the side of a mountain broke free, tucking families 
into eternal beds of dirt. Her daughter remembers

crying into a dial tone
while watching broadcasts of bodies being dug from rubble.
Her son only speaks of how the tumbling earth pivoted from the lavish 
house at the end of the block––legend has it the Guirolas cut a deal 
with the devil. Sold their souls to build a dream:  
grand windows, Grecian pillars, guarded soil.

2 0 2 6   V i r g i n i a ,   U n i t e d   S t a t e s   o f   A m e r i c a 
Question: Can you buy your way out of spontaneous disasters? 
Answer: 
It was a quiet Monday for Ines’ grandchildren
mere inches from the gurgling inside their mother’s throat,
the news wouldn't reach Salvadoran phones for another hour.
Thirty minutes till dawn, maybe vignettes of every heartbreak, 
sunny day, dead pet, and second chance were ushering
the transition. Her granddaughter remembers 

the cancer metaphors 
when the oncologist learned she was a poet, 
“Treating your mother’s cancer is––well, have you ever played whac-a-mole?
When the cells destroy the body like this, suddenly, 
there is only so much one can do. “I mean look at Chadwick Boseman,”
he said “you cannot buy a way out of being buried."