5 poems
Incontinent Crossings
My cousin is a year older. A double
citizen. Two ice cream scoops
on a language cone. I’m backlogged
for a visa. I can sing “La Bomba.”
I don’t dare dance.
One more balloon at her party,
I’m fastened to a chair,
afraid to pop. The song “Papi Chulo”
says “virgins,
shave your pussy hairs”—
I’ve seen her blond barbies.
Walled, is the border at their crotch.
Crossing my legs, I manila
folder my pee away.
It takes courage. I hold it tight
on the bathroom line
to the big girl’s consulate. I don’t squat.
I’m incontinent
I pee
my hand-
me-
down
-
to my ankles
in the stream
of my thighs
territorial
out the party
past la pinta
down
the block
to
my-parents-
have-not-left. They’re building me a desk[i]
instead of a life in the U.S.
[i] Only 4.3 % of undocumented students make it to higher-ed institutions. I’m in a masters program and with this privilege, I enroll in an introductory sculpture class where I make a paper aircraft the inside of which looks like a wrecked raft. This raft is like a rocket ship making a nosedive because I did not major in engineering. The rest of the structure is handmade paper, a combination of post-consumer Colombian jean fiber and employment authorization applications I’ve cut up by hand and blended. I write this on this paper from which I make the wings. The crumpled pieces hang on a gold wire I’ve barbed with my hands. In explaining the sculpture I said, "well, when they told us to work with paper, I thought, "what do papers mean to me?" and I decided: being able to fly. And how I'm a deferred childhood and how children make paper airplanes when they're bored in class and this is the simple joy of school." When asked to imagine the perfect installation setup, I said a desk. A single regular school desk, where the failed paper airplane can rest and not fit and thus look vast.
Crash Landing
In the housing complex
where we flee,
my knees
buckle to speed,
and blades roll back
the tarmac hill
to tar. I hold a coke
bottled in glass,
break
no bones, burn
with a huff
of recollection:
the barking dog’s gums
on the chase
chafed to lichen.
A faucet runs. Bold
cursive streams
over stagnant
red ink. In the bathtub’s
brick cold,
the gated community
of my hymen,
not walls, but chicken fence
tessellates
clenched against rattle.
English as a Second Leap
Veronica, Paula, the bears;
I want the gummy bears
and, gummied, your strawberry
sweets.
Velcro, my puma shoes,
I fasten with
velcro
I’ve got no J’s,
Debron,
no Air, I’m 13,
when I get carmine
cochineal, the 13s.
Sharif, you’re the funniest,
here’s my treat–
my favorite word,
how you pronounce it,
is bitch.
Before you leave for the D.R.
Jose,
not green,
the drowsy yellows
of a lynx,
bobcat beisoberlo,
such are your eyes
□ YES □ NO □ PLIS.
Ms. Lotito,
the words you taught me, I conjunct:
I smell like cigarettes,
NEVERTHELESS,
THEREFORE,
you hug
only smoke.
Truancy
David needs a glass of milk,
and I leave,
with a hall pass,
through the backdoor of the school,
and bring it to him.
While this happens and David
is drunk and pouty,
literature in my English class happens.
I’ve come with the camo
Air-Maxes;
the engraved,
half a heart
chain;
Cupid’s Day
gifts with our initials.
David is my boyfriend and I don’t quite love him.
I am to him a sum: his father + me
or better:
me - his father.
When this proves too much for me,
I leave,
and drink this glass
I milk.
Curves Perilous
-To an undocumented
you are attractive to me your nose
the core remainder of an apple
proper to a sage
though you blink foolish
at my every question
stirring up a fog
your tears
vaporous
in your response
I’m washed by the flood-brown
freckle of your sclera
and what passes between us
curves perilous as a donkey packed
with uneven sacks
over the brink
of a mountain you remember or I
and behind
in that other home
we both follow
Yessica Martinez is a Queens-based poet originally from Medellin, Colombia. She's an illegalized person who currently holds DACA status. A recent graduate of Cornell University's MFA program, she is working on her first poetry collection.