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How To Be Forgotten
Briana Valdez
This is how I die
Without raspberries in my mouth
They have all been taken out
By the gravedigger whose baby girl was born this morning
Maker of my mud shroud
Maker of those pink round cheeks
Will she get sick from eating too many strawberries again?
Will she get taken to the doctor who also treats stray dogs?
And will he give her the lemon-flavored sucker?
With a scrunched nose and lips puckered
Will she be more than thigh and bone?
Will she take my crown or make her own?
Do this in memory of me
I fear not being forgotten
Because my blood is in your grape juice
I fear the extinction of robins
And the opinion that bivalves cannot feel pain
Surely an oyster has had their heart broken
She dips her sanguine feet in the wet sand
Worming her way through looking for mole crabs to wed
She asks her father, Who will love the parasite?
He replies, You’re too young for that movie.
Surely someone will, she reassures me
And this is how I live.
She Keeps Me Alive
Briana Valdez
Tell a woman of your dream and she will carry it like a child.
She will carry it like a daughter, sloped on her back against the desert’s grain
And not once let her nimble toes graze the ground.
The child will cry and ache and tire the woman
Who has never been a mother
And who has been a mother from the moment she was conceived
Her daughters the roots beneath her
Her daughters who know more than god
Know that pain does not exist
When she walks on water
Just as breathing does not exist
As they feast on her body
Until you remind yourself
That her body is bread
And suddenly forget
That you’re still breathing
And pain is just reaction.
The last thing a mother will do is let her child forget a finger’s breath.
The mother will remind her always
Of grandmother trees, of seas, of strawflowers, and of beads of morning dew
That trickle down her tongue
Her mother, her grandmother’s tongue
Landing in some pocket of her boundless belly.
The mother will remind her always
The power in hunger
And not the cruelty of famine.
Tell a man of your dream and he will laugh.
He will slip it in his jeans and run away
As daughters are stolen every day.
Briana is a writer and dance educator based in New Jersey. She received her English BA from New York University and now works as a Teaching Artist Apprentice with the New York City Ballet. Her work has been previously published in Primadonna, and currently serves as a prose editor for Sunhouse Literary and poetry reader for Only Poems.
