Two poems by Eva Rami
Mama & Me
When Mother Earth crafted me
From the damp mud lining the Ganges River, it was
My Mama who picked me from the delta,
And cradled me to her stomach.
She dressed me in skirts, woven of fibers from the clouds,
And cradled my head in the nook of her elbow.
She brushed the curls on my head with river water
Until they turned stalk-straight, and then she twisted
My silked hair into braided sweetgrass.
When the stalks frayed and splintered in my scalp,
Mama undid my plaits and twisted them back up
With extra care. Still, I screamed my woes
When the stray baby hairs on my forehead were not gathered and
Braided back and her hands slipped on the sweetgrass.
I wailed my sorrows at our imperfections.
Mama grew tired, as mothers do, and left my plait
Unfinished, river water dripping off the edges of my undone
Strands, sweetgrass splinters poking at my neck.
Mama grew tired, as mothers do, but she stayed.
It is fathers, not mothers who are allowed to escape.
When Mama takes a reprieve in her room, though, I sneak out
Into the night of Texas suburbs where stars are scarcer than fathers,
And I visit my Mother
Earth. We sit in the mud in which I was borne and trace patterns
Into clay and soft flesh. Mother Earth traces flowers into her skin
With precision, and I marvel at her perfection. She tells me about her
Favorite creations: The Himalayas, Euphrates River, Mount St. Helens,
My Mama, the little baby hairs that stick out above my eyebrows.
When night falls, I make a home out of Mother Earth’s ribcage,
And settle in under her stars. Only, the grass chafe my hips
And Mother Earth doesn’t know how to braid the stalks into my hair
Like Mama does.
That night, I call out for God, and my Mama comes running.
I crawl through Mother Earth’s rib cage and walk until
The stars dissipate and the mud turns thinner.
Before dawn paints it’s colors, I am running back
Into the embrace of my Mama, as all daughters do,
and my Mama, waiting, picks me from the delta
Once more, from the patterns of the mud, and
cradles me to her stomach.
Body of a Woman
“Body of my woman, I will live on through your marvelousness.”
-Pablo Neruda
These grotesque hands cannot hold hips
and these feet cannot waltz.
This mouth cannot sing
and these legs cannot swoon.
I am the pecan tree beyond the porch
That cannot come to fruition,
The piano whose keys are never quite tuned.
I am parts of a whole, sewn and threaded
To amass this human body of limbs and tendon
and want.
I am a pastiche of particles, a rendering of
My mother’s most unfavorable fear;
And I am sure of this in the way I am sure
Of a sterile suburban sunset.
I am everything but a girl,
Because Mama says girls are sweet and petite,
With baby soft legs and even softer mouths.
Mama says a girl can be whoever she wants to be,
But only if she waxes her upper lip
and doesn’t dress like a boy and
doesn’t draw excessive attention to herself.
Body of a woman, whose hip bones encase
stilted want, silent dissent, and the
essence of everything that could ever remain
powerful and pure, silent and screaming.
These grotesque hands cannot hold hips,
these feet cannot waltz,
this mouth cannot sing,
and these legs cannot swoon.
But these hands can carve words from thought,
These feet are descended from migrants,
This mouth knows to scream “fire” not “rape”
And these legs know how to hold up
The Body of a Woman.
Eva Rami is a current sophomore at Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. She enjoys writing poetry, prose, and dabbling in experimental forms. In her free time, Eva enjoys baking (fails), watching A24 films, and spending her money on chai.