Antepasadxs
by Chelsea Guevara
White teacher asks me if my family from El Salvador is rich
or something, demands to know if this is why I do not have poems
to pull out of the indigenous parts of myself. And the anger
makes me so sick that I’m silent. And the guilt is so real
that it must be mine. The whole day, I think about how tío Carlos
was bottle-fed coffee because they could not afford cow’s milk.
And God bless my grandmother’s body that could not produce enough
to feed her first son. The guilt must have been so heavy, I wonder
if it ever left. It’s always the hardest to forgive yourself for the things
you cannot do. But I tried. Asked my father, the best historian
of our family’s blood, what he knew about the Nawat people
in our lineage, how much presence they have in a heritage
we’ve always called home. He told me we don’t count by percentages:
we are whole.
Angry, white teacher asks me if my family from El Salvador is rich
or something. If this is why I will not write the poem he wants
for a competition, and isn’t it funny? How history repeats itself?
Another white man “discovers” the ways in which he can take
a brown girl and make her useful to him. Breaks her people’s sad history
down to numerical values, and waits for her to write a piece
people will congratulate him for. Tells her she’s a true artist, a storyteller,
but only if the white people in the audience can relate to it.
Reminds her she is worth nothing
unless he says so
unless he edits the piece first
unless he approves it as the proper angry-brown-girl-poem
their public allyship can handle.
How could he make me feel guilty for not knowing enough
about the indigenous parts of myself? of our people?
when the world does so much to hide these memories
and then convince us that they are too far back
to be worth anything? when the real story is so painful,
your DNA deja vus? your chest aches
from learning something you’ve always needed to know?
from learning something you should’ve known already?
It’s always the hardest to forgive yourself for the things you cannot do.
this poem
is an apology to my ancestors or
a conversation
I’m unsure how much you blame me
for not knowing the things trampled beneath Catholic crosses
and American bootstraps
or if you know that the guilt is so heavy,
I wonder if it will ever leave.
Perdóname, pensé que a aprender el español, regresaría a mis raíces
cuando en realidad,
I only traded one colonizer's language for another.
Forgive me, for not looking for you sooner.
I’ve been playing a game of telephone that has been passed down for centuries
an oral history that some days
barely seems to be a whisper of static
if we remember to pick up the phone at all
but I promise,
I’m trying to remember
and find the ways you are here.
I look for you in mirrors,
draw a map between my face
and my father’s
and yours
start from our nariz chata,
to the hairline that births waves the color of coffee my father drinks,
to the one scar I have on my forehead,
to the many my father holds deep between his pores.
Forgive me, for not being able to apologize in your tongue.
Perdóname, por no saber sus nombres.
it does not mean I will never learn.