A Tongue in the Mouth of the Dying

Laurie Ann Guerrero

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780268080730
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Filled with the nuanced beauty and complexity of the everyday—a pot of beans, a goat carcass, embroidered linens, a grandfather's cancer— A Tongue in the Mouth of the Dying journeys through the inherited fear of creation and destruction. The histories of South Texas and its people unfold in Laurie Ann Guerrero's stirring language, including the dehumanization of men and its consequences on women and children. Guerrero's tongue becomes a palpable border, occupying those liminal spaces that both unite and divide, inviting readers to consider that which is known and unknown: the body. Guerrero explores not just the right, but the ability to speak and fight for oneself, one's children, one's community—in poems that testify how, too often, we fail to see the power reflected in the mirror.

II.

SUNDAYS AFTER BREAKFAST: A LESSON IN COTTON PICKING

South Texas, 1943

It was a kind

of dance: feet

shuffling in dust,

fluttering

hands like birds:

nest-building:

blood staining

brown birds red.

Cotton sacks, twelve

feet long,

dragging behind

like a tongue—

fat and slow

as sun.

I watch him:

slow weep

of his eye

remembering

the girl who’d name

and nurse

nine children.

He picks

my grandma

by the color

of her dress,

her eyes,

and because she’s lucky,

not

by how much cotton

she can pick.

PUT ATTENTION

Put attention, grandma would say, as if attention

were a packet of salt to be sprinkled, or a mound

we could scoop out of a carton like ice cream.

Put attention, put attention. Put it where? In her hands?

In the percolator? On top of the television set

that seeps fat red lips and Mexican moustaches?

Next to the jade Buddha? Between La Virgen and Cousin

Pablo’s sixth-grade class photo—marshmallowy teeth

jumping out of his mouth? We never corrected her.

Like the breast, Spanish lulled grandma’s tongue, as we threw

down shards of English, laughing, for her to leap in and around.

Put attention, put attention. Put it where?

Shall I put attention in my glass and drink it soft like Montepulciano

d’Abruzzo? Like Shiner Bock? Horchata? Put attention.

Ponga atención, she tried to say in our language.

Put attention somewhere large. Back into her eyes.

In the part of her brain that doesn’t remember her own

daughters, how to make rice, translate instructions.

ONE MAN’S NAME: COLONIZATION OF THE POETIC

vi.

When you shove yourself into my throat,

the words I know become foreign, jagged.

A new race forms between the soft palate

and the base of my tongue. A pregnant mouth,

I carry you there, where words form:

I sew flags like babies.

BREASTS

It happens quickly.

Two pulpy, pink beads

swathed in skin soft as calf leather

rise, unfurling like a turquoise

spring. They are curious, pushy.

Not long before they take the reins,

manlike, no highway too bitter, no hand

too rough. Such resilient cups,

though raw against the scruff.

Most will tame

themselves, humble, swoop in a seasoned

bow, learn to fill up and empty out, calming

children, men. They’ll wear, wilt—

sweet as burnt milk.

The tarnish can be rubbed away.

I leave mine. Evidence of easing

down the horse.

ODE TO MY BOOTS

Like San Antonio, bronze in the face, white

sky, timid green inlay of nopal, red flores.

I trace running stitch in swirl at the shaft,

finger the leathered sole. Like a shot of tequila,

you courage me up from the toes, delicate

grubs in tomato plants. You render me incognito

among men, ferocious among women who sit

cross-legged in their spiked disarmament.

With you, I navigate bridges; mi coyote on the border,

my twin lanterns. You wake in me the dormant cells,

the not-so-ancient history of Texas,

its women—slipping into something more:

vaquera, embroidered crown, umbilicus.

Both male and female—that knowing.

ODE TO A SKEIN OF RED EMBROIDERY THREAD

Like the veined underleaf

of the New England maple,

but better. Slick, nuzzled

against your brothers, your sisters.

Brilliant head and feet curled

up like newborns, rosebuds

in anticipation. Revolution

in your six-stranded veins—

how I cherish you, envy you:

your potential, your ability

to become saint or star, bird or bear,

the name of a lover, mapped star

for the warrior, sprawling red palace

upon which the head can rest.

ONE MAN’S NAME: CO...