[Poem-a-Week] I Think I Was Born Angry by Diosa Xochiquetzalcóatl
They say that a woman’s ovum develop while in the womb of their mothers.
Apr 02, 2024
They say that a woman’s ovum develop while in the womb of their mothers.
My great grandmother was nine months pregnant
and busting her back as a farmworker,
giving birth to my grandmother
in the middle of the barley fields of Santa Monica.
They say that a woman’s ovum develop while in the womb of their mothers.
My grandmother spent her entire pregnancy
working from dawn to dusk
while my grandfather drank from dusk to dawn,
not coming home until she went and dragged him out of the bars.
They say that a woman’s ovum develop while in the womb of their mothers.
For forty weeks of gestation,
my mother swallowed daily doses of tears
alongside her morning coffee,
wanting to run back home every second of the day.
They say that a woman’s ovum develop while in the womb of their mothers.
It was I who was angry in the 1920’s.
It was I who was angry in the 1950’s.
It was I who was angry in the 1970’s.
And it was I who was still angry in the 1990’s
while giving birth to a beautiful baby boy,
the one who came to finally put an end to this generational curse.
originally published in West of the Santa Ana and Other Sacred Places (Riot of Roses Publishing, 2023)
Diosa Xochiquetzalcóatl, or Diosa X for short, is a multilingual and multidimensional, slam/spoken word winner and international poetiza. She is a seasoned language arts educator with a Bachelor’s in English and Master’s in Cross-Cultural Teaching. Diosa X has been published in a variety of anthologies and magazines and has 4 collections of poetry: A Church of My Own (2021), Hechizera: Sus Sultry Spells (Editorial Raíces, 2022), West of the Santa Ana and Other Sacred Places (Riot of Roses Publishing, 2023), and Felices Fiestas (Read or Green Books, 2023). For more information, feel free to visit www.diosax.net.
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