tortilla knife

1. Funk Soul Brother

My Funk Soul Brother
is the girl I was in sixth grade when secretly
I loved that song.

My family does not use the words
Funk.
Soul. or
Brother.
in my father's house

He would say-- you are white;
race comes from the father,
as if I did not wear my mother's skin
awkwardly to her family reunions

Where he and I always sat apart-together.
You don't want to be
your fat aunts, alcoholic uncles, pregnant fourteen-year-old cousin
You don't want to be
Unemployed with bars on your windows, tattooed from eyelid to toe

I heard what he did not say:
You do not want to be Mexican.
You do not want to be poor.

And I didn't want to be like them.
But my Funk Soul Brother asked him
Do I want to be like you?

I wear my skin awkwardly
to any new social function
where the question unfailingly comes
within the first hour.
If they look like me
I answer, “My mother's parents are from Mexico and my father's grandparents are from Italy”
I am afraid of their assumptions
that I share their culture
that I speak Spanish

If they are white,
I just say I am half of each.

yuckso', a Chinese word (why not)
skin between bamboo layers
“neither here nor there.”

Race comes from the father.

Sometimes my mother objected quietly,
but usually she stayed silent
as my cousins' house on Christmas morning

Silent like the Spanish that her parents
never taught their ten children
Silent like the Spanish I never learned.

In school, I chose French instead.
He said it is more complex and impressive.

Where was my Funk Soul Brother?
This hidden affinity I harbored
that could never check the “Hispanic” box
But daringly encouraged me
to at least check

“Other.”


2. The Edge of This World

Stellato.
the Italian word for knife--
my last name
a blade on which I lost my balance one day,
staring half blank and half afraid

at the woman who had just pronounced my name
“Stellato” like “tortilla.”

I did not correct her.

I, tortilla and knife,
could not accept a Mexican national identity
that blames its raped indigenous mother,
could not accept the Chicano movement's alignment with her
and reject the conquesting father,
My dad

Race comes from the father.

whose body suffered
from two years of frozen pizza dinners
from our two-room apartment
he gave me the bedroom so I could study at night
slept on the living room floor

whose body suffered
for two years of private school
So that I would not have to be poor
So I would not have to be Mexican
like my silent mother
from whose own body I awoke
onto the edge of this world.