Art by Raffaele Monchiero León, age 23 months
suspect
by Raina J. León
in the isolation room, there are dirt spots on the floor. in laboring, as the contraction waves rise to peak pain and then taper, i focus on dirt. i am riding a wave above the soiling. the child washes me over in hot spray. my body sheens over in glow. a nurse says, you are so strong and you are doing so well. her affirmations are dumb; i do not trust them. how can i when i cannot see her lips, her face, beneath the blue mask. i, too, am masked. it’s a dirty exchange. i think in expletives. i try to return to the wave. i ask for a heating pad. they will never bring it. my touch is contagion, suspected contagion. i am guilty until proven innocent. a fever is pandemic. a black body is pandemic. a fever is not a possible sign of labor, though i am laboring. the child pushes blood through the gate, announces herself. the body takes over. the doctor says, “do whatever your body tells you.” as if i could stop her entrance on this human water, the fertile spark of me a path into an isolation filled with people. i focus on the spots and their erasure. mine.
Raina J. León, PhD, is a Black, Afro-Boricua, native Philadelphian, poet, writer, and teacher educator. She is a fellow of Cave Canem graduate fellow (2006), the Carolina African American Writers Collective, Macondo, and CantoMundo and has been published in over 100 publications in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and academic scholarship. She believes in collective action and community work, the profound power of holding space for the telling of our stories, and the practice of humanizing education.
She is the author of three collections of poetry, Canticle of Idols, Boogeyman Dawn and sombra: dis(locate) and the chapbooks, profeta without refuge and Areyto to Atabey: Essays on the Mother(ing) Self. She is a member of the SF Writers Grotto and The Ruby in San Francisco. She also is a founding editor of The Acentos Review, a journal devoted to the promotion and publication of Latinx arts. She is a full professor of education at Saint Mary’s College of California, only the third Black person (all Black women) and the first Afro-Latina to achieve that rank there.
For Summer: Poems by Latina/o/xs is a curated collaboration between Francisco Aragón at Letras Latinas, the literary initiative at Notre Dame's Institute for Latino Studies, and Emma Trelles at the Best American Poetry blog.
Beautiful words from such a beautiful lady!!! God bless you.
Posted by: Charles Rodriguez | July 08, 2020 at 01:07 PM
If you read Frost's "After Apple Picking," you will become a better person, or a smarter person, or a more educated person, or an older person. Choose one.
Posted by: Bobby Frost | March 09, 2022 at 08:36 PM