Poem 8: Bernice Zamora

[akilanajmah]

To cry that the gabacho is our oppressor is o shout in abstraction, carnal.
He no more oppresses us than you do now as you tell me
"It's the gringo who oppresses you, Babe."
You cry "The gringo is our oppressor!"
to the tune of $20,000 to $30,000 a year, brother, and I wake up alone each morning and ask,
"Can I feed my children today?"

To make the day easier
I write poems about
pajaros, mariposas,
and the fragrance of perfume I
smell on your collar;
you're quick to point out
that I must write
about social reality,
about "the gringo who
oppresses you, Babe."
And so I write about how I worked in the beet fields
as a child, about how I
worked as a waitress eight hours at night to
get through high school,
about working as a
seamstress, typist, and field clerk
to get through college, and
about how, in graduate school
I held two jobs, seven days
a week, still alone, still asking,
"Can I feed my children today?"

To give meaning to my life
you make love to me in alleys,
in back seats of borrowed Vegas,
in six-dollar motel rooms
after which you talk about
your five children and your wife
who writes poems at home
about parajos, mariposas,
and the fragrance of perfume
she smells on your collar.
Then you tell me how you
bear the brunt of the gringo's oppression for me,
and how you would go
to prison for me, because
"The gringo is oppressing you, Babe!"

And when I mention your GI Bill, your
Ford Fellowship, your
working wife, your
three gabacha guisas
when you ask me to
write your thesis,
you're quick to shout
"Don't give me that
Women's Lib trip, mujer,
that only divides us,
and we have to work
together for the movimiento;
the gabacho is oppressing us!"

Oye carnal, you may as well
tell me that moon water
cures constipation, that
penguin soup prevents crudas,
or that the Arctic Ocean is menudo,
because we both learned in the barrios,
man, that pigeon shit slides easier.

Still, because of the gabacho,
I must write poems about
pajaros, mariposas, and the fragrance
of oppressing perfume I smell somewhere

-- Notes from a Chicana co-ed, Bernice Zamora.