You know, I don't typically read "Hija de la Chingada,"
but since you brought it up, I feel I should.
So thank you for that.
I love what you said about desire
and how we're not allowed to desire.
And I felt like most of my life I was not
allowed to want what I wanted.
And so a lot of my poems explore that feeling.
So this one is one of them.
"Hija de la Chingada."
The men whistle from their trucks though you're only 13
and your breasts are still tucked neatly inside you.
Every day after school the factory men yell mamacita,
make noises like sucking mangoes.
Technically you could be a little mother
but what do you know of sex.
You with the flapping t-shirts and the glasses
the size of platters.
Two.
One evening you come home an hour late
and your mother calls you hija de la chingada.
De pregunta, en donde estás abriendo las patas?
What boy have you been fucking?
Your ghost father sits on the couch cracking peanuts watching
a Mexican game show, bugles and maracas and big-titted women
dancing with a geriatric host.
Three.
Finally when your plump little body
wants what it wants, when you are bent in the arc of desire,
you take a man inside your mouth in beautiful gulps of summer
until the shame clicks its way toward you
like an ancient insect.
How many times will the rapid pumps
leave you heaving in the bathroom?
Four.
When your mother finds a condom in your pocket
she slaps your mouth with the intention
of breaking your teeth.
She tells you this.
Birth control?
Aspirina, she says.
You put the aspirin between your knees and hold it tight.
Five.
Now you say you're a grown woman who
can fuck her way across the world if she wants.
But when you wrap yourself around your man, when
he yanks your hair the way you like
you still ask him to pretend as if you hold a beautiful rapture
between your legs.
You still ask him to pretend as if you're human.