MAP
#76
Theme:
1999 Christina Sergeyevna Contest Winners
1.
Third Place Winner - Sharon Becker of Northridge California
Mona
Lisa with a Mustache
She
always wondered if bleaching her teeth
would
have helped. If her enamel
had
been just this side of dazzling
would
he have left a phone number
a
ring, a teacup full of leaves she could read and read?
Had
she not hesitated when he asked
to
keep the lights on, not felt
that
that her stomach could turn
a
man on his heel, belt buckle
still
undone? Should she have waxed
her
upper lip, removed the shadow
she
thought only she could see?
Were
her feet not small enough?
Was
her touch too light? Had he needed
to
be punched down and prodded
like
bread dough? Back in the old days
she
thought, people would pull out
their
own teeth or let them go to rot.
Pliers
and thread
a
drink or two for ambition
the
paint brush later to put a shine on them
as
if they had been plucked from oyster bellies.
Organic
beads ready for stringing.
Molars
are hard work. Perhaps she'll have leave them in.
Balance
out the spaces along the strand
with
found objects. Twigs and feathers and such.
©
Sharon Becker
2.
Second Place - Frank Pool of Austin
The
Corridor of Memory
Holocaust
Museum, Washington, D.C.
These
shoes were made to endure, but not to last
this
many years. The old leather sags into a softness
of
animal origin. Wasn't it Einstein who said a physicist
should
be a cobbler, one who should theorize at the last
while
punching with his awl? What a Jewish science
that
would make, humming in the shetl, smelling bread
baking
in the ovens across the street, little gingerbread
people
in there, philosophizing. I have seen the pictures,
still
and moving, and wound my way in slow progress
through
mostly silent crowds. The energy in a mass
of
old leather sucks light from the white corridor. Brown
shoes,
mostly, made for concrete streets and bare floors,
constructed
for endurance in ghettos, in dim poverty--
yet
the open-toed summer sandals, the girls' shoes,
the
elegant ones, gleam a muted white in an expanding
universe
of brown. The photos keep their sepia tones,
their
cosmos of black and white, and black and white,
and
brown shoes, and brown shirts, and black ashes
floating
in the continuum of time. I have seen many
of
these images before. But I can smell the shoes,
the
reek of slaughtered cattle, fashioned for the feet
that
walked this earth, our moral planet, coming now
to
rest in their pairs, in their mountains of silence.
In
every shoe, an emptiness, a man or woman or child
cut
out, absent to the very last, to their Jewish souls.
©
Frank Pool
3.
First Place - Liliana Valenzuela of Austin
November
2, 1998, on the Eve of Becoming an American Citizen
Not
me, not I
a
gringa I would never be
gritos
de "muera el imperialismo yanqui"
resonando
en mi cabeza
yo,
la Malinche,
"there
is always me-search in research"
going
full circle
me
an American
a
Mexican-American
a
bona fide Chicana chayote-head
My
life is here now
raising
my bilingual chilpayates
married,
metida hasta las chanclas
in
this brave new world.
A
binational
una
Nutella bicolor
vainilla
y chocolate
dual
citizenship, at least,
los
politicos en Mexico finally woke up
to
us "raza" on this side of the border.
Welcome
Paisano, Bienvenido Amigo,
hasta
que se les prendió el foco, cabrones.
Ahora
sí, pásenle, que su nopal está lleno de tunas.
Aquí
en la frontera, en el no-man's-land,
mujer
puente, mujer frontera, mujer Malinche.
Ahora
sí, cuando me chiflen por la calle
me
podrán decir "gringuita" y por primera vez
lo
seré, una bolilla, una gabacha,
mis
ojos azules y cabello rubio por fin
corresponderán
a los estereotipos de la gente
"But
you don't look Mexican..."
Enton's
¿qué parezco? ¿acaso tengo changos en la cara?
When
I die, spread my ashes along the Rio Grande,
the
Rio Bravo, where I once swam naked.
©
Liliana Valenzuela