Janette Schafer: Two Poems

We Eat the Clay
            “When we leave our hunger will go with us.”  Natalie Diaz                          
 
We eat cakes of masa and mud
burned for want of oil or fat
in Abuela’s last good skillet.
 
The mud cake assaults the belly,
threatens to leave in a shower
of bile.  My niñas cry—
 
Mama, it is so bitter!
We need agave,
we need a bit of cream,
 
the taste is black,
the coal clings
to our tongues.
 
and if their stomachs
were not so empty,
if their ribs were not
 
drawn and pulled inward,
we would hurl mud cakes
against the wall,
 
cast them into
the forest or river,
burn them in our fire
 
while there is still wood
left to burn.

 --

Ode to my Birthmark
 
My Abuelita had one on
the same leg, the left one,
as did Tia Alicia,
brown with ragged borders,
an island on a map
 
There is a Pemón legend
that birthmarks indicate
how a past version of
yourself has died, a scar from
an ancient mortal wound.
 
I think we must have
all died together, witches three,
a coven and a covenant, 
a brand on our limb that says yes, 
we will return together.
 
I trace my finger on
the nubby moon rock 
surface, a protuberance
from the rest of my skin.
 
This is one part of me
that is brown like my ancestors,
connects me to them,
marks a spell so I am not
the pale witch left behind.

Janette Schafer is a Venezuelan American writer who lives in Pittsburgh. She is the author of Something Here Will Grow (Main Street Rag, 2020).

Copyright 2020 Janette Schafer.