to my mother by Ana Minga - Per Contra Poetry Summer 2008

Tobacco Dogs IV by Ana Minga Translated by Alexis Levitin

to my mother

She begs for mercy

gets up fighting the absence of food

senses that I want to throw my soul into the sewer

I know that any moment she is going to die

that I am not what she was hoping for.

Today I told her

that her face was just like Frida Kahlo’s

(look how lovely)

but here between us

the similarity is not only in the face

but also in the lovely braids

and the cursed womb

for in this story

I can be her daughter

but in the other

I was Frida’s lost embryo.

Pray! Please pray!

I cry out to her

and she prays I do not know to whom for courage

while

we wait for the poison to explode