POETRY - The Suitcase was Stuffed

Join our mailing list and receive WRR Monthly. Click below to make a tax-deductible contribution. People Interviews Columns Blogs Places Princeton The United States The World Open Borders Ideas Art, Photography and Architecture Health, Culture and Food History, Religion and Philosophy Literature: Fiction, Poetry and Books Music, Humor and Comics Science and Politics WRR BLOGS: WRR@Large: Editors' Choice Wild Finance: Where Money and Politics Dance The Age of Reasonable Doubt Diary of a Writer in Midlife Crisis Wild Table	Email Print More POETRY - The Suitcase was Stuffed by Ivón Gordon Vailakis, J.C. Todd The suitcase was stuffed with scorpions, with clay pots and dirt roasted corn and fava beans, with pans of warm bronze of dulce de leche and quince canvas bulging from the lunges of poisonous snakes. Our destiny was to be far from the aroma of plantain and tree tomato ripened on the lips of roofs. Our destiny was like my father's - a couple of schellings in the pocket pierced by a star he said goodbye to his father with the idea of detaching himself like a caracol rooted in chasms of tenderness no time to take the black doll whose arm was stitched so often the thread held time and no time to take the knee socks I wore on the last day of high school no time to take the trees I climbed by myself to the middle of a hive that buzzed between my temples no time to take the warmth of the popcorn pot no time to take the way I skipped rope in the courtyard no time to take the family album embroidered in cross stitch destined to the parting destined to lemon-grass teas steeped in tears that flushed our hearts we left with the hot coals of a fate not chosen we arrived before we knew it men with fish eyes and the accent of crude ants detained us you must declare all the dirt that you are bringing you could be fined you cannot bring food to this country you will be fined defensively we declared our pots of roasted corn and fava beans we lifted our underthings trembling and felt what it was to step foot on land not our own they inspected all we had and did not pay attention to the snakes. From that day on we came to know the destiny of border to make love to snapshots yellowed by the distance of their background. We opened up the suitcase and from that day on we cultivated hummingbirds in exile. To support our mission and passion for good storytelling, please make a tax-deductible donation by clicking here: Wild River Donation. Tags: Poetry S. America Ivón Gordon Vailakis Ivón Gordon Vailakis, poet, essayist and literary critic, has published Colibríes en el exilio (Ecuador: El Conejó Press, 1997), Nuestrario (Mexico: Impreteri Press, 1987) and Manzanilla del insomnio (El Conejó, 2002), which was an honorable mention in the Jorge Carrera Andreade Award in Poetry and winner of the Artist of the Year award from the city of Quito. Her poetry and critical essays have appeared in journals in the Ecuador and Mexico and the United States. Colibíies en el exilio was a finalist for the prestigious Extraordinary Award of the Casa de las Americas. Born in Quito, she immigrated to the U. S., receiving a Ph.D. in Latin American Literature from the University of California, Irvine, and is a professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Literature at University of Redlands in California. A former Fulbright Scholar, her interests include Latin American poetry, the Latino Diaspora and borderlands studies. Her scholarly interests include Gabriela Mistral, and Ecuadorian poets César Vallejo and Jorge Carrera Andrade. Colibríes en el exilio (Hummingbirds in Exile) has been translated by J. C. Todd IVóN GORDON VAILAKIS IN THIS EDITION: POETRY - La maleta estuvo replete » View all articles by Ivón Gordon Vailakis Ivón Gordon Vailakis J.C. Todd J.C. TODD is author of What Space This Body (Wind Publications 2008), and two chapbooks, Nightshade and Entering Pisces, both from Pine Press. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, The Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, Crab Orchard Review and Verse Daily. Awards include a Leeway Award for Poetry, a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Poetry Fellowship, an international exchange fellowship to Schloss Wiepersdorf arts colony in Germany and a scholarship to the Baltic Centre for Writers and Translators in Sweden. She has edited translation features for Frigate and The Drunken Boat. She is a visiting lecturer in Creative Writing at Bryn Mawr College. » View all articles by J.C. Todd J.C. Todd	Wild River Consulting & Publishing where Your literary success is our bottom line. "By the time the wise woman has found a bridge, the crazy woman has crossed the water." ANATOLIAN DAYS & NIGHTS published by Wild River Books Reserve Your Wild River Ad For more info, please contact: Amy Constantine
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