Break By Elisabet Velasquez After Patricia Smith

Break

After Patricia Smith’s The Five Stages of Drowning

I. Break

My mothers body slumps on a bus on her way to the welfare office.

Her face pulses, absorbed with trauma from my fathers fist.

Open hand, dorsal. Not really a fist at all. Backhand.

II. Inflammation

The heart is not made of bone. Still, it too can fracture and swell

when it rains. The welfare worker stares at the bright red and blue

stain on my mother’s face like she’s never seen

a rainbow in fragments. Mami burns her eyes

through the woman with the job and the sick days.

She is the opposite of mami, pale, the perfect hue.

A picture on the woman’s desk jeers at mami.

A wedding photo. Two hands, joined, on purpose.

The husbands hands more paintbrush than hammer.

Her husbands hands know that blue is for sky,

not bruise. My mother’s face is blue-grey storm.

Her eyes fat like clouds before rain.

III. Soft Callous Formation

The blood under mami’s eye begins to clot.

The worker wants a name. “Who did this to you?”

Mami blames a door, a child’s toy and their careless aim, a lack of sleep.

She does not blame love.

Mami knows a thing or two about lying.

Some questions are not meant to be answered honestly.

The worker does not want a name.

She wants the children. Mami’s face is broken.

Her home will not be.

IV. Hard Callous Formation

After papi leaves, mami develops disdain

for my older sister Marilyn.

She says she is a puta.

Must be living up to her name.

My father insisted my sister

be named after Marilyn Monroe.

The women in his life should shine,

he gives my sister the middle name Estrella.

Mami runs her fingers across her cheek bone,

the only place she has ever gleamed.

My mother blots concealer

under the darkest part of her eye.

Her face a supernova.

She is quick to remind Marilyn that she is no star.

She was born to a black sky.

V. Remodeling

Though a bone is healed. It is never

quite the same. Mami has been breaking

in other ways lately.

She hears things. She asks me

if I hear them too.

I know a thing or two

about lying. There are

some questions that are not

meant to be answered honestly.

____________________________________________________________________

ELISABET VELASQUEZ is Latina writer, poet, feminist, from Bushwick, Brooklyn. Elisabet writes about her experiences as a woman.

Elisabet first began performing her poetry at the legendary Nuyorican Poets Café and in 2009 earned a spot on the coveted Nuyorican National Slam Team which achieved 4th place in the Nation. She is a 2016 VONA/Voices Alum.

Velasquez has performed on various stages and Universities around the country, including Lincoln Center, Pregones Theatre, The Bushwick Starr Theatre, Rutgers University, Williams College, Aldephi University and Pace University.

She has featured at The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, The Bowery Poetry Club, Brooklyn Museum and many other prestigious venues in The United States. Her work has been featured at Vivala.com, Muzzle Magazine, Centro Voces and Elephant Journal. She is the author of the chapbook PTSD. She is currently working on a one woman play and a weekly poetry series titled Pain to Poetry in which she reclaims painful personal experiences and repurposes them into a conduit of personal power and purpose.