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For Laco: My Key
By Jennifer Givhan


I translated you into a language I could chew—

chomp between my teeth like
the abalone in ceviche
then swallow down with lemon
and Cholula.

Ay! God only knows how I loved
to speak you:

Machismo man, with your mami
complex I honestly
believed I could cure.

I’d perform a limpieza of your heart.
I’d be your curandera—
my mouth the sage,
tongue,
the candle.

I should have known from that
first introduction with your mother;
she called me La Henna behind my back.
Y La Profesora.

I wanted to trade my white half
for the color of your eyes,
the masa in her kitchen.

Instead, I learned to love in Spanish,
to grieve in stanzas,

to let go in between.

To hang on in the words that have no
translation.

 


Jennifer Givhan is a Mexican-American poet who earned her Master’s Degree in English literature with an emphasis on feminist poetry and Latina motherhood at California State University Fullerton, where she was the recipient of the Graduate Equity Fellowship. She teaches composition at Fullerton and Cerritos Colleges, and she is currently applying for Ph.D. programs and working on a full-length collection of poetry. Her poems have been published in Verdad, Dash, Caesura, Mom Writer’s Literary Magazine, Third Wednesday, Cutthroat, Pinyon, Earth’s Daughters, Palabra, and Rockhurst Review. Jennifer lives in Southern California with her husband and toddler son.

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