TE22 Potpourri

Ángelo Néstore

Impure Acts

If My Mother Understood Spanish and Read My Poems

there are so many ants in my mouth, why their fathers’ friend still thinks he’s young.

If my mother knew her son wants to be a mother she’d catch the first plane to Spain. Her legs would shrink, she’d amputate her arms, break her spine in two, swallow her molars one by one and her sixty years. She’d become increasingly smaller, she’d invent a language,

At fifty, at sixty, who will bring me home, who will tuck my bones beneath the sheets. At sixty, perhaps, at seventy who will answer my questions, who will tell me how difficult it is, how lucky I am when one day I get confused and order another round before the lone light of my refrigerator.

babbling once more to be my daughter.

206

207