Amphibious | Shaped into a Kind of Life | (This is my body—)
Amy M. Alvarez
Amy M. Alvarez is a poet, educator, and scholar. Her work focuses on race, ethnicity, gender, regionality, nationality, borderless-ness, and systemic injustice/social justice. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Crazyhorse, The Missouri Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, PRISM international, Rattle, Sugar House Review, and elsewhere. She is both a CantoMundo and a VONA Fellow.
Amphibious
“L’Siren,” says the Frenchwoman, sliding a faux
ivory bangle engraved with a mermaid on my wrist.
I run a thumb across fin and scale until I come to her
face: full lips, round nose, hair dreadlocked. I recognize
her face, balance her many names on my tongue: Mami
Wata, Yemaja, River Mama, Oshun, L’Siren. Full breasted,
black and ivory, a mermaid in metamorphosis. She is not
caricature like colonial depictions of blackness pulled down
from attics and brought to this market: red lipped, bugged
eyed, coal black. She is allowed beauty. I consider how it is
to whip between worlds, consider my own body, skin some
say makes me “ambiguous,” in a tone that tells me the word
is synonym for their discomfort. I buy the bangle for a few
euro, keep it on as I swim into the cold Mediterranean
basking in the space between those continents, breathing sea.
Shaped into a Kind of Life
A Golden Shovel, after Lucille Clifton
After a beating, chest heave, and an I won’t
do it again sung through gritted teeth spelling I hate you.
After, I could count the welts and celebrate—
I still had breath to sob, didn’t I? With
my mother/aunt/uncle’s mantra this hurts me
more than it hurts you dripping from what
ever belt, brush, shoe, spatula I
had put into their hands to have
them imprint object on my me shaped
by hands that could bake or bruise, shaped into
compliant child, seen and not heard, a
bud of rage began to blossom. A kind
of blaze, of scissored heat beneath scalp, of
jaw clenched, breeched nuclear core of a life.
I caught the memo: anything weak was target. I
remember grabbing the little girl’s wrist, I had
no gentle in my glare. I quaked with the fear in her. No
longer object, but an actor—I could give pain. Model-
ing myself momentarily after de Sade, cruelty born
of soulless ribcage, heavy stomach, broccoli in
her teeth still, eyes brimming, I brought her to my Babylon.
(This is my body—)
naked arms sagging jowl
knuckle pop
cystic breast tilted uterus
when I have stood naked before mirrors
when I have twisted before mirrors
both pleased and mortified by my abominable
body, firmness giving way to wrinkles, pimples
to chin hair, dust to dust
I’ve wished my body invisible as if
this were possible for a woman with my face
in this country
when I wish I had not said what I’ve said
(which is most of the time when I say)
I wish for my body to fold in on itself
bones rice paper
until I am small enough to slide
into pocket until I am small enough
to slide into my womb
free from acrimonious reproduction of the self,
disappearing into ever-vernal continuum
luminous
broken for you
Issue 9.2