The Literary Review
Law 116
(Between the 1930s and 1970s, approximately 37% of the female population of Puerto Rico, mostly in their 20s, of Puerto Rico were “legally” sterilized, without, or with coerced consent.)
What difference does it make?
One more, one less.
Lives not lived.
Waste.
What difference does it make?
One hundred, a thousand less;
they’re already dead.
No place among the civilized.
Don’t speak English.
Don’t read.
Don’t write.
Feral breeding
for the tending of what fields?
I spare them pain
and sad refrains
from infant deaths;
what can they offer?
Diphtheria. Dengue. Dysentery.
A borrowed fist of sugar.
What difference does it make?
One third, more or less.
Stopping their eggs.
Tying their tubes
Scraping their wombs.
Progeny of the poor.
Misery for them.
Taxes for us.
I’m stopping their eggs.
Tying their tubes.
Scraping their wombs.
God’s work.
I’m told.
- Magdalena Gómez
America You Are A Disappointing Lover
Woolen moans spread over a Mingus blue night;
Black hands rub
over trash fires, winter’s lamp
beneath grieving skies where prayers
from the lynching rope still go to die
The genie has committed suicide
her ashes fill sockets
meant to hold eyes
all of her wishes
turned justice denied
It is harder to dance than it has ever been,
and most necessary at this time.
Emmett, your face
your memory
buried alive
a scalding silence attempts to erase you
as the sanitized iconic
are held up to replace you
Who will hold up
your dream?
How many mother’s wombs carry your tomorrows?
Divided nation
seethes in divination
of a new civil war
absent of all civility
there is no liberty
when you’re born into society that hates
the very thought of you
sanity unhinged with every cringe
at the sound of three simple words:
Black Lives Matter
Who will dare to feel the wild raging
slashes burning into your hated flesh
for the audacity of being born Black?
Who will dare to hear
you again and again and again?
It is harder to march than it has ever been,
and most necessary at this time.
The bullets
the cuffs
the beatings
the nightstick rape
arson’s flames
Four little girls
in church clothes carry embers
to light your way.
America,
you are a disappointing lover;
A wild drone built for darkness.
Your name embeds into my mouth.
With fractured hands I rip you out:
I scream
I howl
I shout
Black Lives Matter.
To Stand.
To March.
To Dare.
To Rise.
To Know
it isn’t just
that Justice is Blind.
It is harder to march
to dance
to sing
to shout
to defy
to create
to exhume
truth from lie
and most necessary at this time.
- Magdalena Gómez
Legacy of Vigilance
mami wears a head wrap
on a cornmeal bag
brought in from Mexico
at the everyday is different store
She coulde be
from Cuba
Puerto Rico
West Indies
Mississippi
she could be Jewish
she could be
she could be
knot of two peaks
Blackness
cotton fields
bent back
underfed bones
raped coral reef
hush child
grown women called girls
whipping post erections
born in West Africa
dragged by the uterus
to America
Mami tells me cornbread is medicine
conjured in the black skillet
passed down through generations
a story lives by flame
skillet goes down hard
cracks open the dawn
genuine laughter waters the fields at last
cleansing rain, every drop a lotus
Nature’s forensics on the side of good
evidence feeds the next batch of cotton
roots slurp up the blood
the bastard falls
horses content to dent
the rubbish of pain
Into a new season’s mulch
blissful silence carries
descants of munching
the reddest of apples
freedom sweet like a hymn
of praise, of thanks
hard fist of bread
hides in a pocket
in the burning
in the freezing
railroad outruns vengeance
Mami stares out from
from a sample bag
brought in from Mexico
at that every day is different store
she is with me
in the running
In the burning
in the freezing
in the butter
spreading wide
in the hot skillet
ready, always ready
- Magdalena Gómez
