Once, While Disemboweling the Chicken

readying it for my lover’s dinner, I remembered

my abuela slashing the rooster’s throat. I was four.

Held the wet blade in my hand and cried. For days

the carcass hung like a cross over the red front door

until it shriveled and stunk, turned gray as dried petals.

Abuela said don’t cry. She said be fearless & god-fearing

as any white man, so I became just like guajiros

carving the air with bright machetes.

At home, in school, in America, razors slept

in our socks like small slick moons and hydrangeas

bloomed despite the heat while I became a woman.

For twenties, my tíos chopped weeds with green machines

spinning big metal mouths filled with hot blades.

You must praise the Lord with your body, Abuela said.

You must give yourself over as santeros do, without doubt.

At every ceremony for Dios, I held the white cloth

in my hands like a soul. Abuela slashed the bird

like a man unbothered. I thought the trick to surviving

this country was to be good or beautiful

or merciless like its people, but choosing didn’t matter—

soon I’d be pinned on a bed like an animal

while someone else’s hunger made a sacrifice of me.

Of course I tried to fight him off, but Abuela’s birds

taught me when your arms are pinned behind your back

there’s no chance of breaking free. Across the neck,

she motioned, like this, as she slid the blade

and prayed and ate. How can I forget

the hen’s throat now—her pulse ablaze with fear

as I combed her feathers neat, placed her gently

on the altar. Mira Isa, you must kill the bird.

This is how we speak with saints.

This is how we prove our worth.

The knife was light. Blood ran through my hands

like a storm. I shouldn’t have been surprised;

it was easier than I thought—replacing fear

with numbness, cleaving the bird’s breast in two.

Stilled, her wings bent back the way my wrists bent

when he cooed me quiet, squeezed my neck.

Hands warm and strong as a god’s.