>> If you happen to be Chicana, oftentimes, editors ask you to send different poems.
They want poems that are more representative of the Chicano group.
They want poems with one more serape, with one more frijole, you know, whatever.
And you sit down and you tear your hair and you wonder, well, gee, who am I trying to represent?
And you begin to realize, like so many people writing, that you really are a kind of hybrid.
And you really are kind of person in the middle and the only kind of poem
that you can write is really a poem that represents just yourself
and maybe a few other people quite a bit like you.
And this was a poem that I wrote for that kind of editor.
It's called Even.
You look for her.
Someone you could crack down the nose line, between the breath and lower sea,
brown Oregon's, brown blood, brown bone even.
These words you want are a game and those of us
who have learned the game have triangular hearts, which spin gyrate toward white,
toward brown, toward ourselves most often, our way to gather edges
like dry wood, make a bed, a bridge.
Lie on it.
Our lives, our mouth, no matter how the jaw placed, the teeth don't see you.
They buckle here.
We point them out so when you point at our lives, you get it straight.