Effy Guzman

Here

Mourning in this country is difficult she said
or didn’t say but thought
or didn’t think but knew

What do I know Pathology

A pathology, isn’t that how it starts?

Abnormal absence
of your generous voice—static
through the orphaned phone

A pathology of impaired regulations
of borders of hunger of loss
of cutting or pulling or extracting

gone wrong

Infectious they say
infectious laugh, your aunt
I know
this much grief,
how it slides in scale,
memory becoming abscess
ready to rupture or drain,
painful and warm to touch,
full of debris

I was overwhelmed she said
The problem is that I didn’t see her

The image of you
at the altar on our table
had sad eyes,
the rigidity of your mouth
unfamiliar
Unbearable,
so we blew up

a lower-res image of you
where you’re smiling
through pixels,

where we could pray for your
ruddy-cheeked warmness,
neither here nor there
wrenched open

As close to my mother
as anyone comes,
and just as far from
my uncanny mother, gouged
by memory, indiscernible

these nights while she makes tea
with a blurry face

When did you realize that you were alone?

I don’t remember praying
the summer before I turned 9

abnormal sink
I was being bathed in

and the moment I came out
I was reminding myself
to catch myself

alien matter
frequently becoming
swallowed
God spit

while by my mother
a drunk driving accident
video in broad daylight

turned back
to count to 7

death that happened on a Wednesday
will remember you for months

in a way, alone?

From Operación Pedro Pan

— after Ana Mendieta

Hello Father,

It’s been a while
nearly 20 years
of waiting for your return

I’ve been trying
practicing my words
but my mind keeps drifting

off and off
Mother is here and I know her
though I don’t recognize

the nights here, least of all
the days that burn like the heat
of that Exodus where we followed

starlight straight into flickering
orphanhood and I thought of your face
it swam in my underwater head

while my body was ablaze
“It was wonderful. It allowed
14,000 kids to get out of hell”
Well, then what dead world is this?