In the living room, the Green Bay Packers rush the roughed-up
pigskin over a sea of bobbing helmets.
Bob curses, his white-red fist bulges into the air
like the time he asked me if I wanted a knuckle
sandwich, spit splashing leaping salmon.
Last summer Mami taught me to puncture
the sky with splintery signs
¡El Pueblo Unido
‘til my arms went numb
‘til I chanted not from throat but from innards
‘til my voice eroded
Jamás Será Vencido!
I had to suck on Vicks for three days straight.
We had to conquer our fear of La Migra—
faceless phantoms taking names,
caging chestnut children like rabid dogs—
by calling on St. Cesar: Patron Saint of the Brown.
In the guest room, in a house
that’s not our own
Mami’s machine beeps.
I look up at the time, pick up a can of Ensure,
feed the saucy cream to her plastic tubery—
a deserted road to her metastasized inner child.
I turn Mami on her side
readjust the cushion under her hips,
support her forehead while she
vomits. I measure
the swampy sludge,
remnants of her anatomy
in ounces like a diorama
of spirit remaining, trickling down
ounce by ounce, mark it
on the tablet hung to the bed.
—In—take
—Out—put—
After the game, Bob sinks deeper
into his recliner, turns up Bill O’Reilly.
In the guest room,
Mami squeezes my hand hard.
A miniature pond gathers
between each of our fingers
like the oceans we swam,
oceans we would continue to swim
to stay together
if only life worked like that,
in precious, magical wagers.
In the living room, the Green Bay Packers rush the roughed-up
pigskin over a sea of bobbing helmets.
Bob curses, his white-red fist bulges into the air
like the time he asked me if I wanted a knuckle
sandwich, spit splashing leaping salmon.
Last summer Mami taught me to puncture
the sky with splintery signs
¡El Pueblo Unido
‘til my arms went numb
‘til I chanted not from throat but from innards
‘til my voice eroded
Jamás Será Vencido!
I had to suck on Vicks for three days straight.
We had to conquer our fear of La Migra—
faceless phantoms taking names,
caging chestnut children like rabid dogs—
by calling on St. Cesar: Patron Saint of the Brown.
In the guest room, in a house
that’s not our own
Mami’s machine beeps.
I look up at the time, pick up a can of Ensure,
feed the saucy cream to her plastic tubery—
a deserted road to her metastasized inner child.
I turn Mami on her side
readjust the cushion under her hips,
support her forehead while she
vomits. I measure
the swampy sludge,
remnants of her anatomy
in ounces like a diorama
of spirit remaining, trickling down
ounce by ounce, mark it
on the tablet hung to the bed.
—In—take
—Out—put—
After the game, Bob sinks deeper
into his recliner, turns up Bill O’Reilly.
In the guest room,
Mami squeezes my hand hard.
A miniature pond gathers
between each of our fingers
like the oceans we swam,
oceans we would continue to swim
to stay together
if only life worked like that,
in precious, magical wagers.
Tatiana Forero Puerta is originally from Bogotá, Colombia. Her work has appeared in Able Muse, Literary Juice, Hawai’i Pacific Review, Moon City Review Anthology, Juked, and elsewhere. A 2017 recipient of the Pushcart Prize, Tatiana was also a 2017 finalist in Brutal Nation Prize for Writers of Color and has been nominated for Best of the Net. Her first full-length collection, Cleaning the Ghost Room was a finalist in the Autumn House Press Poetry Prize. She holds a dual B.A. in philosophy and comparative religion from Stanford University and an interdisciplinary M.A. from New York University. Tatiana lives and teaches in NY.