Four Short Poems

You Called Me Corazón by Sandra Cisneros 

That was enough

for me to forgive you.

To spirit a tiger

from its cell.

Called me corazón

in that instant before

I let go the phone

back to its cradle.

Your voice small.

Heat of your eyes,

how I would’ve placed

my mouth on each.

Said corazón

and the word blazed

like a branch of jacaranda.

This poem is about returning to a man and forgiving him after he confessed a form of his love over the phone. So often, women are taught to be forgiving and have their attachment and worth be related to men. In Stevi Jackson’s journal article, “Even Sociologists Fall in Love: An Exploration in the Sociology of Emotions,” he focuses on love, how it does not get enough attention in the world of sociology, and the romanticization of love. One of the concepts in the reading is how “love is a way of seeking personal salvation in this world (as opposed to other worldly salvation),” and for women, this is a socialized process. Media and other forms of mainstream communication teach a false love, “utopian” that can be harmful and perpetuate negative behaviors, such as accepting maltreatment in the name of love (Jackson, 1993, p. 211). 

Name calling such as “corazon” is sometimes enough to ignore the “heat of [the] eyes.” In this poem, “the heat” can be interpreted as anger or rage. The notion of “conquest” also appears through these verses and can be interpreted to show how men sometimes use kind words to manipulate and excuse harmful behavior (Jackson, 1993, p. 214). For example, with the use of sweet-talking and kind acts of service such as bringing flowers the “conquest” occurs and “masculinity is asserted” (Jackson, 1993, p. 214). In the process, manipulation occurs. The passion and desire to be loved is so strong, a product of socialization, women are hurt.

 

A letter to las tias locas by Kim Guerra

We are the ones who dared to live a little differently

By loca, they mean free

Wild like the wind.

Te atreviste a vivir tu vida para ti. 

Maybe you never married

Maybe you got divorced

Maybe you just don’t give a fuck and simply live. 

Que honor que te digan loca

Siéntete orgullosa de la libertad que te haz dado

Tal vez eres queer

Tal vez no tengas hijos

Tal vez te valió madre

E hiciste tus propias reglas

Y decidiste hacer tu vida tuya.

This poem is one of admiration, affirmation, and congratulated resistance. Kim Guerra writes an ode to “tias locas,” which means “crazy aunts” because of how they are viewed in Latin culture. Guerra writes to the tias that “never married,” “got divorced,” and “simply live” because, generally, they are looked down upon. Women, especially brown women, are typically taught to tend to their husbands, have children, and make things work even if they are not. The lesson to put men before yourself and your needs is taught too often, especially in patriarchal societies, so much that if you do not, it is shameful. For this reason, Guerra aims to uplift the women viewed as “locas.” 

Snarky comments at the dinner table, chisme, or gossip behind backs result from choosing to live life differently. Guerra, however, sees this and decides to celebrate it by writing, “que honor que te digan loca” meaning “what an honor they call you loca” because she sees the beauty in rejecting patriarchal norms. In class, we talked about an asset-framing mentality in a journal article titled “Reducing the Joy Deficit in Sociology: A Study of Transgender Joy” (Shuster and Westbrook, 2022). The reading highlights that while it is essential to acknowledge harm, it is just as important to notice the good. Similarly, while Guerra mentions the insult “loca,” she then praises the word to reclaim it, turning it positive. She writes verses on the power of women making their own rules to live freely without being held down by the negative, shameful comments they receive. The asset-framing tone of the poem thus makes being called a “loca” something to be proud of.

 

Ma after Fajr by M.N. Shehryar

the vines fall capriciously against a wall, green-yellow stems filling gaps of concrete into wholeness. my mother i think is looking for something to care for, her children having grown too soon’, the violence in her husband’s voice not allowing for a slowly nurture. my mother in silence prunes a leaf, waters what i assume are either tomatoes or coriander, an expert wrist giving just enough that they might give life themselves. my mother teaches plants how to fly. my mother spends her afternoons on the terrace, rearranging mint so it sprouts taller, calling over the maali to furnish it with cow dung, cracking eggshells into insides of earthen clay. my mother says this is food for the soil. the money-plants are many, and my mother spends months intertwining their systems, making whole a family (if not hers). my mother has never pulled a plant from its roots. my mother can name shades of green, can in partial blindness identify rot from undernourished, will bury love into mush it refuses to emerge from. the days go by and my mother’s terrace is now a garden. she has grown something, a child intact, not a single root (even by accident) discarded. my mother when she is (often) sick never leaves her bed. the bougainvillaea call, asking to be planted, wanting to know why her favourite colour is green and not pink. my mother sleeps through this, and wakes to a week (maybe) of waking, steps outside and thumbs through a leaf. obliviously a child of hers sleeps in the next room, another across an ocean, but here is this: that which she grew/clenched dirt keeping hostage thriving root/a vein she can croon, and it will never leave

Taking on the mental load, childcare, and domestic labor, Brown women are situated at the center of the family system’s functioning. Bound to expectations that force them to decenter themselves, they find themselves engaging in embodied labor that starts to become intrinsic to their personalities. Knowing their family’s tastes, dispositions, and needs, the household ceases to function without Brown mothers. In this poem, Shehryar uses the metaphor of a garden to illustrate and accentuate his mother’s relationship with nurturing and nourishing others. His word choice of “filling gaps” and “wholeness” suggests how integral care is to his mother, who is incomplete when she is left with no one to care for. The phrases “teach,” “making a family,” and “bury love” indicates the roles his mother plays in the home, where she engages in daily labor to regulate her family, which ultimately helps sustain her. This poem empathizes with Brown women who feel lost with no one to care for and feel tireless and lonely when left to their own devices. Through Shehryar’s intricate account of his mother’s gardening, he builds a portrait of the level of attention, nurture, and support that Brown mothers devote to their families and simultaneously identify with. 

Relegated to a  subordinate social stratum as they have less independent access to money, power, authority, and status, Brown women have “elaborate routines of attending to (and being accountable for) both the mundane and extraordinary organization of the details of their partners [and families’] personal and emotional lives in ways that revealed traditional gender roles” (Pfeffer 2010, 174). Often, “The responsibility of nursing older male members in the family falls entirely on a female” (Mishra 2020, 69). Though they portray these behaviors as “[matters] of personal style or a reflection of roles that [are] intrinsic,” they ultimately perform most of the emotional and embodied labor in the household (Pfeffer 2010, 174). Nearly all of the emotional and bodily labor they perform is unrecognized,  unpaid, and unappreciated. Through this poem, Shehryar attempts to center Brown women and the gentleness, tenderness, and love behind their unrecognized labor.

 

Woman and Salt by Sara Shugufta

There are many types of respectability

The veil, a slap, wheat

Stakes of imprisonment are hammered into the coffin of respectability (honor)

From house to pavement we own nothing

Respectability has to do with how we manage

Respectability is the spear used to brand us

The selvedge of respectability begins on our tongues

If someone tastes the salt of our bodies at night

For a lifetime we become tasteless bread

Strange market this is

Were even the dyer has no colors

The kites on the palm of space are dying

I deliver babies in imprisonment

The earth should be playful for legitimate offspring

Because you deliver children in fear today you have no pedigree

You are known by the name of one wall of your body

How you conduct yourself has been made central to your status

A beautiful gait

A false smile chiseled on your lips

You haven’t wept for years

Is that what a mother is like?

Why have your children turned pale

which tribe of mothers do you belong to

of rape, of imprisonment, of a divided body

or of daughters bricked up alive.

Your daughters in the streets

Knead hunger with their own blood

And eat their own flesh.

Which of your eyes are these

How many times has the wall of your house been bricked up

You let may daughter be my name

But your son’s name is the currency of the time

Today, your daughter tells her own daughters

I shall brand my daughter’s tongue

Blood-spitting woman is not a metal

Is not looking for bangles to steal

A battleground my courage, a spark my desire

We were born wearing shrouds round our heads

Not born wearing rings

Which you might steal.

Submissiveness, docility, and silence are traits valued in Brown women. In their cultural context, a woman who aligns with these traits is characterized as respectable, decent, and ideal. Often their agency, opinions, and needs are brushed aside and overridden. Brown women find themselves attending to the physical and emotional comfort of others, creating “a pleasurable experience [for them]” (Kang 2003, 827-8). In this poem, Sara Shugufta negotiates the realities of being a woman in a South Asian cultural context. 

Through her words “respectability has to do with how we manage” and “how you conduct yourself has been made central to your status,” the audience is able to get a sense of the surface and deep acting Brown women engage in to be perceived as worthy by others. In marriage and relationships, “gender operates as a social institution that lays the groundwork for the very existence of these [relationships] and frames the interactions that occur within them” (Kang 2003, 835). Shugufta describes the pained surface acting women must adhere to through her words “A false smile chiseled on your lips / You haven’t wept for years.” Through her words, the audience can gauge that Shugufta is burdened, wounded, and distressed by the labor she is expected to perform, however she feels she has to perform happiness, satisfaction, and contentedness to be deemed honorable by others. She illustrates the lack of agency Brown women have in doing emotional labor as it is presented as a necessity, essential for the livelihood of women unless they want to be cast as indecent. Moreover, women are only allowed to take up space if they hide their internal desires and needs from the world, and make themselves small so that others can exist freely around them. Instead of accepting this gendered expectation, Shagufta picks at its implications for the women it affects. Through the words “imprisonment,” “hunger,” “divided,” “brand,” and “battleground,” Shugufta creates imagery similar to that of war and violence, showing the detrimental impact it has to her mental well-being. Through this poetry, Shugufta resists, reimagines, and disrupts normative emotional and bodily expectations.