The Wake

He couldn’t teach me how to be a Mexican,
The Spanish sticky sugar in my mouth.
It tasted sweet, but never would roll off,
Just stuck there, caramelized, a latent thing
That I would never really speak, just hear
From my father’s fluent foreign tongue.

I looked a bit like him, but my own tongue
Was my mother’s, Minnesota’s. Mexicans
Made beautiful “R’s,” like the sound you hear
From a contented cat, but my own mouth
Produced the sound like lawnmowers, snow blowers, things
That I grew up with and could not shut off.

It would seem only natural to be put off,
Frustrated, shaming myself for my tongue,
An un-exotic, bland and stubborn thing,
Refusing to assume a Mexican
Stance—would form domestic O’s with my mouth,
Like “boat” like “snow,” like endless roads I’d hear,

Not the beautiful staccato there to hear
During telephone conversations to far off
Places, to people who helped create the tongue
That could barely say “I love you,” the mouth
That stayed shut, eyes that burned. When Mexican
Abuelitos said “Te Quiero” I never said a thing.

“Lo siento” was one of the only things
I could actually say, and when I’d.hear
It, I’d want to cry for myself, for Mexican
Aunts with gorgeous tans, on or off
The beach, and with an obedient tongue,
That didn’t have to say “I’m Sorry.” A mouth

With more than four words in it. A mouth
I envied wholly. I envied their everything.
My mother said I didn’t need a tongue
For such things. I was not born there, but here,
An American. I didn’t have to go off
And learn to be a Mexican.

Mouth closed, I hear frowns in my father’s words.
It’s hard to get a thing like that off your American chest
Without a Mexican tongue.