I.
I live with the slaves in the dirt behind the big house
where my mother sleeps in a princess bed.
My hair is pledged to the blessed virgin until the day I marry.
My mother made that promise to god when I was curled in her belly,
afraid I would come out with almond eyes & olive skin,
a member of them and not her.
Today if we were to hold hands
our fingers would look like tangles of white and whole wheat spaghetti.
Our hair is the same red,
but mine is so long I have to braid & twist it into a pile
on top of my head and it pulls so hard my eyebrows always look surprised.
She thinks I’m the devil.
I have one friend & that’s Oveja the sheep dog.
It’s our job to keep the sheep in the field at night.
Once we saw one swallowed by a python.
The only part that stuck out was its lips
but I could see a sheep-shaped lump in the poor snake’s stomach.
I got ten lashings that night.
II.
The day I got bit I was at the market with Marcella, the matron slave.
Somewhere in the forest of legs I saw a furry creature bounding toward me,
and when I felt a wet nose on my ankle I looked down to see shiny teeth smiling at me
through a drippy foam.
I only cried a little ’cause I’m ten.
Marcella wiped me up with her apron,
the tears, blood, and white stuff combining
to make a pink blob-stain, which made me laugh ’cause pink is nice.
I walked around the rest of the day with a half moon on the bump of my ankle.
III.
I’ve been feeling a little strange.
Today I woke up wearing a bloody mask
in the field where the sheep eat breakfast.
First I was scared that they all wondered off,
but when I yanked the hair out of my eyes
I saw what looked like a hundred like giant raspberries
all mashed with a hammer and splattered through the meadow.
A wooden fence post lay like a sleepy puppy at my feet.
I walked home weighed down by my gooey wet clothes,
picking woodchips from under my fingernails.
IV.
I was brought here on a horse,
a man I’ve never seen in my life
riding open legged behind me.
He tells me my legs are to be crossed.
Where I am going I am to act like a lady.
His hair is different than mine
but the eyes are the same.
Marcella scrubbed me that morning
until my wrists, forearms, and knees
swelled and ached from too much touching.
She said the whiter I look the nicer they would be,
but I told her that no matter how hard she rubbed
she could not wipe the brown from my skin.
We had been riding for three days,
though there are gaps in time
that I do not remember.
Since the sheep died I can’t sleep.
When we arrived he did not enter.
He lowered me into the arms of a man
dressed in black. I did not watch him ride away.
V.
Today I heard the women talking of the hanging
of a Spanish slave in the village & I thought of Marcella.
In a room with no windows three women
touch my half moon scar with cold, hollow hands
that seem to deflate each time they press their fingers to my skin.
They kneel on the floor and bend their heads before
a large golden cross nailed to the wall.
Forehead, chest, shoulder, shoulder.
A man enters the room and the three at the cross stand.
A bowl of water is placed on a stool next to me and
I am circled by the army in black.
A woman traces my scar with the tip of a knife.
Forehead, chest, shoulder, shoulder,
hands like the tip of a triangle in front of the face,
hands holding others’ hands and now singing,
sing louder than the demons
that hold the child,
because it is not her screaming,
it is the throat of the mighty, horned beast
and nevermind the rest that were bitten
and turned rabid that day,
god needs a sacrifice.
About the author:
I’m a junior at Oswego State University and I hope to attend Lesley University in fall 2010 to get my MFA. I write for a student-run magazine and when I graduate I would love to hold poetry workshops for young writers who want their voices heard.
