April 1984
The young mother born
with the wrong name
boards a plane.
Flanked by
her second and third child,
she squeezes the last
of the honey from the plastic packet
and stirs
her tea
not with the flimsy stick
handed to her by the pink stewardess
but with her own stubborn finger
ignorant of etiquette or the gossip
gathering in the rows behind her.
The young mother does not check
her watch
during any of the 19 hours
her first flight her first time
over the Pacific Ocean—
that blue expanse on the map from
Manila to Milkenhoney, California.
She watches white
cartoons clouds
out of the oval window
practices her English
wiggles in the heat of
her cloth corset to hide her size
and keeps a flat hand
on her belly
as if to say
soon enough soon enough.
In three weeks, her last child,
small-eyed his skin lighter than the others
will be born:
he will hear the clatter of two languages
stories about home from the others and
cry for his mother's milk.
Copyright Credit: Jan-Henry Gray, "April 1984" from Documents. Copyright © 2019 by Jan-Henry Gray. Reprinted by permission of BOA Editions, Ltd., www.boaeditions.org.
Source: Documents (BOA Editions, Ltd., www.boaeditions.org, 2019)