Sara Borjas

Conditions for Poetry
          after Rich Villar

You’ve got to feel trapped but know you can be fast.
Cover your hands with socks and walk backwards.
You’ve got to return instead of leave.

Your body must stop at nothing to be acceptable. 
Eyes like dirty menudo bowls, brain of water.
You’ve got to feel trapped but know you can be fast.

Recall every flower you’ve ever stepped on so you’re 
prepared when the poem asks you your names. 
You’ve got to return each name you want to leave.

A desire that growls like crumbling metal 
alarm clocks. A love as sticky as guilt. 
You’re not trapped. Know you can be fast.

The sky is always taking something away. What made you, 
left you here to explain them to your friends. 
You’ve got to kiss their shadow instead of leave.

Enter your mother’s shadow like a gate to the future.
Run back and forth underneath it forever like a string of ants. 
Even the trapped can learn to be fast.
You’ve got to return. You’ve got to leave. 

Sara Borjas

Maybe we all don’t really come from anywhere but come from running through

lands where we weren’t wanted or didn’t want ourselves and maybe it’s not a land maybe it’s an idea maybe it’s a kind of tree or road or love my grandma drove her kids across a country in a blue pick-up truck and slapped my mother every sixty miles for looking like the man they were leaving he was boring she said never danced had his two thumbs in his belt loops on the side of the makeshift dance floor in Rio Grande maybe she left him because she was fleeing stillness stone sometimes I think I notice it inside her sometimes she’s tough to love my mom says she wishes my grandma had a cell phone so she could text her I love you because she can’t say it to her face maybe I’m from that that hole in my mother’s throat open like a dirt road maybe it’s the road my mom told me about the one way in El Paso her and my grandpa would drive the Chevy down collecting aluminum cans toss them into a sack so they could eat how it was the only time she has used fond and memory together maybe that’s where I come from that distance between what she thinks love is and what she got and maybe I’m the dirt under her feet the trapped breath she runs along back and forth between her mother’s hand and her face back & forth between her father’s thumbs & the dance floor back & forth between her girlhood and mine

Sara Borjas

Poem My Mother Writes about Things She Hates

A dirty house. Thin toilet paper. 
Stupid people. 

Crumbs in bed. Animal hair 
on any surface. Foggy days.

When people make promises 
and never keep them, or deny 

doing anything wrong.
Two lane freeways.

Bad service at a Diccico’s. 
I don’t like waking up 

too early, losing at the casino, 
running out of an ingredient 

when I’m cooking, and 
especially not having all 

my baby chicks here at home. 
I hate people who use me 

like your Aunt Rosa when she 
talks about poor us poor Daniel 

poor Lupe they don’t have anything
then I help but when I ask 

for something she can’t help me.
I hate when people tell me something

then deny ever saying it.
Slow drivers. And I super hate 

sweating on hot days!
The worst part, though is not
having all my kids here 

at the same time. I hate 
that Punit broke Sara’s heart.

I hate that Emily is lonely 
cause she doesn’t have 

a best friend. I hate that Frankie
misses his son so much when 

he has to go on tour in Iraq.
I hate that Shari died and we

didn’t got to say see ya later.
I hate that I wish I had 

a better relationship with my mom 
and that my pops lives so far 

away in Texas. I hate
that my little sisters got screwed

and I should have been there
for them, like be a big sister

and hold them and tell them
it will all be okay.

I hate that I wish my mom
had a phone where I could text 

and say I love you cause 
I can’t say it to her face.

Sometimes the tears 
and the heartache just creep

up on me and I just want 
to run. I hate that I wish 

I could have done more things 
differently, like be an accountant 

or go to school. I love my life, 
but, just asking, maybe, 

should have, could have? 
I wonder if I’m too old 

to try and learn to play guitar. 
Electric? Because I love 

Peter Frampton
and Santana. 

Sara Borjas

Girl

Garbage cans again when I close my eyes. A girl in a one piece
treading water our father filled a garbage can with.

My hand grips the edge of something empty:
an apology, a simple green tub, her body pushes 

a broom along the floor. My father carves slow jams 

into the summer heat, as Chicanos do.
I am fed up with this crooning, this same 

lyric about how love rips us. Here, the ground  
will always be tiny cracked faces 

of smoldering clocks. The empty bottle

of vegetable oil is leaking, the small refrigerator 
filled on the patio, a broken fan. My mother 

lights a candle before she drinks.
I still have this face 

and everything I’ve never said. 
Water, like memory, swirls loose

the brink of my body. It is 
becoming impossible to remain.