{"id":13061,"date":"2023-12-03T22:06:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-03T22:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/?p=13061"},"modified":"2024-01-04T20:51:47","modified_gmt":"2024-01-04T20:51:47","slug":"three-poems-yenifer-maria-mezquita","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/?p=13061","title":{"rendered":"TWO POEMS – Yenifer Maria Mezquita"},"content":{"rendered":"

TO THE LOVER <\/strong><\/h2>\n

 
\nWho was never truly a lover
\njust a rotting corpse
\n 
\nA pile of hollowed-out bones
\nlooking for a place to lay
\nwounds of war
\nand unspoken desires
\n 
\nYou
\nmade a coffin out of my body
\nand buried yourself in my hips
\n 
\nYou
\nslipped in through my teeth
\nnot knowing
\nthat I have swallowed men whole
\nnot knowing
\nthat I carved out the depths of myself
\nto make room for you
\n 
\nI chose you
\nbecause only a dead man
\nwould want to sleep
\nin an empty wet hole
\n 
\nDear lover
\nI am sorry if I never told you
\nthat I\u2019ve been a graveyard
\nlonger than I\u2019ve been a woman
\n 
\nSo rest easy now
\nyou can lay your death
\nInside of me
\n 
\nI promise
\n 
\nthat your grave will have a name
\nthat the soil from my body
\nwill absorb the nutrients from your flesh
\nand sprout wildflowers between my legs
\n 
\nI promise
\nthat I will take the emptiness I birthed
\nafter four years of never making love
\nand I will carve it into your headstone.
\n 
\n________________________________________<\/p>\n

THE OCEAN <\/strong><\/h2>\n

 
\nfeels like the salt crusting on my brow,
\nlike the wind dancing with my hair
\non a Sunday afternoon
\ndespu\u00e9s de la Misa
\nfor those that don\u2019t pray
\nbut still believe in god.
\n 
\nIt tastes like\u2013
\nespagueti con pan.
\nAnd if I was lucky,
\nun pecao frito de Maimon.
\n 
\nLike the sour grapes
\nfrom the trees that lined the beach,
\n 
\nlike the saltwater
\nwashing away the sand on my feet.
\n 
\nWhen I was a kid
\nI used to look out at the ocean and think\u2013
\nthis is all there is between you and me,
\n 
\nwater
\n 
\nAs deep as the hole in my chest
\nthat never goes away
\nand I don\u2019t remember exactly
\nhow it got there,
\n 
\nthe ocean
\n 
\nis warm and clear
\n\u2014tonight
\n 
\nIt feels like rays of moonlight
\ntickling your skin,
\nlike the rattle of cicadas
\nechoing through the wind
\nwith Oscar de Leon
\nblasting in the distance,
\n 
\n\u201cLloraras y lloraras sin nadie que te consuele.
\nAsi te daras cuenta que si te enga\u00f1an duele\u201d
\n 
\n[Clap]
\n 
\nFor a moment
\nyou are here, now
\nin the present.
\n 
\nRemember
\nthat you don’t belong
\nto any one nation.
\n 
\nRemember
\nthat your bloodline
\nwas born of the sea fearing
\n 
\nThat your ancestors
\nhave loved across oceans
\nfor centuries.
\n 
\nRemember
\nthat hyphens are made of water
\nAnd that you are too
\n 
\nYenifer Maria Mezquita was born in Santiago, Dominican Republic, and lived in Altamira, Puerto Plata, until age 8. She moved to the Bronx, New York, in the summer of 2001 and grew up \u2018en el ba y ven,\u2019 often spending summers with her grandparents back in the Dominican Republic. She attended Amherst College in Western Massachusetts and now lives in the DC area, where she works for a national non-profit. A life-long self-described \u201ccloseted poet\u201d and storyteller, she has been dreaming up words and worlds for as long as she can remember. She loves Miyazaki films, downpours, cats and looking up at the sky.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TO THE LOVER   Who was never truly a lover just a rotting corpse   A pile of hollowed-out bones looking for a place to lay wounds of war and unspoken desires   You made a coffin out of my body and buried yourself in my hips   You slipped in through my teeth not [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":201,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13061"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13061\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13179,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13061\/revisions\/13179"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}