Poetry Winter 2020 fiction all issues
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Paula Reed Nancarrow
Morning Coffee
& other poems
Jill Burkey
Mala
& other poems
Oak Morse
Boys Born out of Blues
& other poems
Beatrix Bondor
Engine Ode
& other poems
Monique Jonath
a mi sheberach
& other poems
Lisa Rachel Apple
Bounty
& other poems
Gillian Freebody
The Human Condition
& other poems
Kirsten Hippe-Rychlik
and we are echoes
& other poems
Devon Bohm
Forgiveness
& other poems
Jeddie Sophronius
I Rest My Mother Tongue
& other poems
John Delaney
Poem as Map
& other poems
Elizabeth Bayou-Grace
Fire in Paradise
& other poems
Monaye
In Utero
& other poems
Michelle Lerner
Ode to Exhaustion
& other poems
William French
I Have Never Been
& other poems
Josiah Patterson Wheatley
Coeur de Fleurs
& other poems
Karo Ska
womb song
& other poems
Robyn Joy
Sisyphus
& other poems
Han Raschka
Love Language
& other poems
Rebbekah Vega-Romero
The Memory in My Pinky
& other poems
Gilaine Fiezmont
Europe, too, Came from Somewhere Else
& other poems
Scott Ruescher
At the Childhood Home of Ozzy Osbourne
& other poems
Emily R. Daniel
Visitation Dreams
& other poems
Lindsay Gioffre
Toxicodendron Radicans [Sonnet 1]
& other poems
Gilaine Fiezmont
Europe, too, Came from Somewhere Else—To America
I. Zeus, What Have You Wrought?
Columbus says he’s ours.
You’ve got to go back
to that first push,
he says,
I’m not responsible!
he says
you
committed the first crime.
Cortez swears he’s
not the one.
His soul weighs heavy
on our son’s mind.
What to do?
How to judge?
Not the one set
destiny
in motion.
Custer died doing
what he had to do,
clear a path for
manifest destiny,
your project,
says
this land
always thrives on blood
passes
responsibility
back
to you.
Rita Hayworth says
she’s not responsible,
had her Indio teeth knocked
out,
her Indio hair bleached
white,
her image projected
onto our orphaned princess,
made fertile for our
utopian dreams.
Don’t walk away now:
We spawned them all and I,
Am I responsible
for your theft?
And perhaps it’s true
what they say
about the children of rape,
perhaps the violence of our children
spilled out from that first
passion
between us,
in those first times
with continents
young enough to be named,
an island to run to,
a new world to be made.
II. Between Homes
You sit facing me
and as we fall
back
into English,
and very good English at that,
the others in the cafe know
You’re not Mexican!
In spite of your dark skin.
You told your father
Your friends told their fathers:
“I am Indio”
Your fathers are proud of their Spanish blood.
With Bodas de Sangre so full of handsome Spaniards,
I try to think of what Spain has given you
besides
devoted mothers and hushed whispers
as your sisters discuss
the cute little bastards
they see on the down low.
Ana-Maria speaks up in the back of my head:
“We’re all the bastards of the Spanish,
all of us with Spanish surnames.”
She tried to think of Indio surnames.
“I am Indio!”
Your skin peels today, but it doesn’t hurt.
Only Spanish skin burns.
And I remember Indian women silently serving their men
and I wonder how my taste for handsome Spaniards
is culturally determined.
They fought for seven hundred years
before they came over
started your fight
for a name,
your women dyeing their hair the color of maize.
In Spain the Revolution
killed her newlyweds, and the dead
were left to bury their dead.
When Marti failed here,
Spain’s bastards
turned
on each other leaving
your Indio grandparents
burying their woven language.
You speak only Spanish,
and of course English,
like every Pocho hustling
Chicano pride in Mexican streets.
It’s your turn Herbert:
Go to Spain
Tell her:
I am your bastard.
Now is the time for Spain
to listen
to her bastards.
You are Indio but do not throw away
that part of you which needs you most.
III. Guanajuato
Have I made you my tour guide?
You’re new to the city
yourself wandering through the streets.
A picturesque maze,
one cannot get lost,
the city’s too small.
This is the time of mixed messages,
the article I read
asks feminists to
draw the line.
Here, together, we
sip coffee and dissolving
lines begin to touch
as we become
better acquainted.
Children look up
stop playing long enough to guide you.
Their grandparents turn
to tell us you’re
on the wrong track.
My handsome guide,
towards the evening, tired,
legs hurting,
we sit down, discuss
your future, mine and
subtly
the present.
We speak of sisters,
yours, the nineteen kids
your mother bore like a good Catholic.
She still takes the girls
to Mass, and you tell me,
it’s their business.
Standing in the torch
of the Pipilo we find
the time of mixed messages.
You say we should go dancing, it’s
good for the soul, a little
harmless fun before Sunday.
We look down into the city
as we walk
to the sky,
booby-trapped sentences
tearing at the fabric
of smiling tourist interest.
I should not lose you in this maze.
And yet I want you
to taste some of my life
in this world so familiarly yours.
IV. B.C.—D.F.—Visiting Friends in Mexico City
You come for the late-comer,
punctually whisk me away
into a city in the midst
of daily re-definition and
joke about the Plague
God decided to hand your land.
Her People.
They say the world grew jealous
of Mexico, God
had to even out the score,
and he’s working at it, still,
my train was late,
my glasses got stolen,
your car was robbed last month.
We chat in French,
the day after you tell me
your English sister-in-law
doesn’t know what she’s talking about,
complaining daily about her
underdeveloped life, saying
you’re partial.
Your sister-in-law may not believe
in God, but she agrees with him:
Everything would be perfect in Mexico
without Mexicans, there’d be a plan for
the traffic,
air,
water,
enough, perhaps, for another green Jerusalem.
To me you explain: “Oui, c’est vrai,
je me vois Mexicaine!” So we compare
beauty, culture, your proud past,
I tell you about Indios and you
glance at your maid
pouring dark coffee into our cups,
ask: “Tu trouve ça beau?”
A child still I heard
about the perfection of Moussolini’s
trains, how for once,
they ran on time,
no thieves snatching purses
from unlucky tourists, how
there was order
alongside the terror.
Here I suppose you got a raw deal:
Your car disappeared
with the same ease
as the ninety-thousand Americans
that stood in the way
of a safe America.
And picking your way through
the various factions of the North,
you can only fall back on yourselves,
a people cursed to soothe
our jealous world.
V. One month after arrival—To Zeus
1.
I was five years old when we reached Crete.
Our island paradise had no electricity.
In the center
of the petrol lamp
a flame rose each night,
fragile, hot,
sometimes it would break the glass.
One month after arriving
I could almost make my way
to the center of town.
It’s easy, really,
to sleep at different times
Everything is so tiring.
Every day, spring showers
hone the roads, marigolds
brush against the mud
It is a green country
in October.
In April the meadows came alive.
From your cave, from
snow-glazed mountains
giving birth to a sea of poppies
you’d come to distend
the wool that kept me warm
Replace it with your hands
your breath a white cloud
hanging over the White Mountains
south of Chania.
A strange fall
lures me into a sandy grove
the heat is thick
with papayas hanging
like green pumpkins
from patches in the sky.
Cloudy-white
waves splash my legs
drag rives of mud beneath my feet
enclose my body as I float
out to sea.
Once you know the point
at which a wave breaks,
you dive for its center
feel its power graze your feet.
Two months after arriving
fevered memories mix
little differences the houses all
remind me of each other
black grids grip glass
my aching feet cool the red tiles
climb the wall I
press my head against
the white stucco crossed
by a thousand fissures
skein catching me as I fall
silent.
Warmed by desert winds
the island yields its
fruit, my lover’s eyes
gaze over the shape
of the future judge,
and drying, Crete
begins to sing.
I don’t know
where these crickets hide
they fill each
night with memories I
cannot tell
which will be more important
cannot judge yet,
One month later,
when the mangoes in the garden
ripen.
They get stolen,
like the peaches
barely yielding to our mouths
ripped from the trees
I found one half-eaten
in the piles of rotting leaves,
Green and foreign like all
this land, this city touching,
encircling me.
You have filled
my life with new doubt.
This new love
the fates offer me
his green tongue
opening my lips,
unravels my desire.
Tropical light splashes
over
the window sill, summer thunder
opens
my new chapter, and
I am reminded
I have come here
too much a stranger
to take my old place.
I slide
my fingers through
dried petals of familiar jasmine,
wonder about its journey
from Asia
to Europe
to America,
And step into my new world.
Teacher, researcher, writer, reader of international literature and poems from many lands, 
Gilaine Fiezmont started writing on a dare when she was twelve. Born in Switzerland, her first immigration experience brought her to Los Angeles, California, in 1976. After college, she spent a gap year in Mexico, a second immigration experience that crystallized in her five-part poem “Europe, Too, Came from Somewhere Else”. Since returning to study linguistics, she has stayed in the City of Angels.