Screaming
In Lima, my mother screams from her bed and from a garden
and in the parlor of her nursing home, and she screams as they wheel
her down the street and when they change her diaper,
and my aunt texts me to tell me about her screaming, and I’m left
to imagine what’s at the core of her new tongue: a smattering
of grunts and cries; and, in the last video, she screams mis hijos, mis hijos,
which I cling to because it means we still exist in her, and she screams
in horror, like waking up in a dungeon—the yowl at the end of death—
she is the loud wail of all humans suffering, telling of our basest
truth, the barbaric yawp but divine as great whale song, yet, she calls from miles
away and I want to answer her call, so I scream back into the chirp
of cicadas, the rustle of trees, past the rush of highway toward
the clouds where planes zoom southward, over the thin air and Andean
peaks, the scream vibrating outwards, send it out to touch at the edge
of her scream, so she feels me, hija, inside her scream’s shudder.
Notes:
This poem is part of the portfolio “The Chorus These Poets Create: Twenty Years of Letras Latinas.” You can read the rest of the portfolio in the December 2024 issue.
Source: Poetry (December 2024)