Two Poems
BIO
Catalina Adragna is twenty three years old and a Poetry MFA Candidate at Rutgers University-Newark with an undergrad at Bennington College where she studied Poetry and Drama. She has previous publications in Eunoia Review, Delta Poetry Review, and Silo Literary Magazine. She is a Gemini and a Pocha. twitter.com/catadragna.
no, I wasn’t always this short
after Sara Borjas
or maybe I’m just enduring like I’m always
enduring other things, like the pinch of my mother
when I was too scared of that needle but the pinch
pained me harder than the prick or the heartbreak
of my brother when he stopped wanting to play
using bowls as hats and started using toy
guns as guns. I ask myself why I care so much
about the actions of others, of the things I cannot
control and I look in the mirror and weep
saying my name three times hoping I’ll appear
in a form larger than I am. I am nine
in my dreams when I imagine my father
is dead and I drink chocolate milk
like coffee and ask questions about
choking on my baby teeth. I am nine
feet taller than I should be. I say no
when I mean yes. More importantly,
I say nothing when I mean no. When I walk
down the street I walk under “For Sale” signs
without ducking. I am as small as a life size
Elmo doll I used to kiss to feel something. His
red skin makes me think of the red underbelly
of a spider or the red blood hiding under my
white skin. My White skin hiding under my
White name hiding under my Aztec head. I
am spoken to in Spanish and answer in
English. I shortened my name to make
myself fit in. I wasn’t always this short,
it’s just the White world forcing me
to endure, shortening me until I’m
one of them.
trauma is short, healing is long
the night I met La Llorona, her limbs melted
into a bowl she asked me to eat. I wondered
why there were two separate words for unicorns
and those with wings as I slopped up an arm
and two soggy legs and drank the shavings. I
cried with her as we sung songs about those
who have wandered so far from our hearts
the strings frayed and caused a friction so deep
the fire burnt down the house our bodies lied
within. she nestled into my lap and I stroked
her head and combed her unsullied hair until
the stories of her children tied a lasso around
my wrists, pulling me into her scalp until we were
heads on heads, tied together by grief. she whispered
she would not drown me, only leave me in my own
company. I no longer understand why I cry,
only that it consumes me.