Sara Borjas

Colonialism

“The true focus of revolutionary change is never really the oppressive situations      that         we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of                      us.”
-Audre Lorde

I am both a woman
and a woman who asks 
what a woman is. 
I will never be
guaranteed 
against fracture. 

I hold my debris. 
Look, 
my dark hair thick
as whips, my legs
straddled like a couplet
across intimate subjects. 

Look 
at the Great Story, 
still,
straight 
as every erased 
row of corn, as 
the vein’s compulsion 
to carry its blood 
away.

I ask color 
why its named me. 
I ask the namer 
who her mother is. 
She has long hair, 
like you. 
She eats doubt
from her own hands, 
like crumbs. 
She wraps her hands 
around the eagle’s body 
like a dish rag.
Each word even God 
writes she takes 
credit for. 

Who are we 
other than the owned 
and the owned? 
When I say mother
everything that 
urged me into this 
world scatters 
like the body’s 
original dust,
the colonizer 
always scrambling
to that new, new place. 

Sara Borjas

Instructions for Tasting Spirits

establish a purpose  for tasting  this 
will mostly be  for application    a sea-
sonal cocktail  or modernized   classic  
modify   elevate   what already exists  
know exactly  what you want   how can you 
best use a spirit   an energy  that funk  of some 
rum   or armangac    attitude    because like 
them   you may still have another   mouth 
on you   a history   of Scandanavian rice grain   
a mother too quiet   men on horses   lips   
turning themselves   inside out like   turning 
jump rope   or shame   trailing you   as you cut 
a field of canes  be open   tasting is about 
connection   personal experiences   say  
Danielle Steele novel   between mother’s daily 
fingers   barn burning   with Lagavulin in 
your mouth   kick a soccer ball   mother is 
thin in that dream  Wednesday   she comes home 
from work   acknowledge   the bent steel   behind 
your teeth   the smell of a house   uncooked 
how smell   does not correlate   to the linger   
of sour plum or tamales   find useful & meaning- 
ful words to describe   each spirit   that mood 
when you did not  know   or just   be 
comfortable    with memory and instability   
how your mind   organizes scraps   into past   
and what   you would give   for your life 
to be   as simple   as it was then   in the closed 
afternoons   at the long green field    where 
you cried   for no one   but yourself   you 
had control   not yet knowing   everything 
you did or said                  wonderful   
and your mother stayed   because she  wanted to   
and you wrote   proud    without it turning  to dust   
tasting    is about   emotion   an honest  enlivening    
of what cannot be    otherwise

Editor’s note: for mobile users, this poem is best viewed in landscape mode.

Sara Borjas

The Garden

Here: what I know

                                and what I give you: a garden of particulars 

                                                                                                                              a house: Fresno 

                                                                                                               my father: just outside its frame 

these rows: faulty scales 

                                              I plant : my perspectives 

                                                                                                                           ask you : how responsible he is 

these versions : ____________

                                                  my father : his garden

                                                                                                                             his garden : misguided

my parent’s relationship 

                                                               : 

                                                                                               a glass house balanced on dead ocean

              a valley : my father 

                                                             his hands : order 

                                                                             white : want  

                                                                                                                             white : family

How can he love : what dies 

                                                                                                                             each fall : here 

                                       a true story: I expect 

                                                                                        too much : I grew up

                                                                                                   wanting to be white: my father to be white

                      an apology :  that keeps 

                                                                                                                           my own failures : from measure

I refuse : what he grows 

                                                               I water : some garden  

                                                                                                                              while he loves : me more 

                                                                                                               than I could ever : love him