Sara Borjas is a queer, Chicanx poet and the author of "Heart Like a Window" and "Mouth Like a Cliff." They are the winner of a 2020 American Book Award. The recipient of fellowships from MacDowell, CantoMundo, the Ragdale Foundation, and the Poetry Foundation, Borjas lives on Ohlone territory in Oakland but stays rooted in Fresno, California, territory of the Yokut peoples.
Decolonialish
I am trying to write a poem that is
not complicit. But my rage, this page
published, exempts the English
department that employs me.
I clutch money, a job with no power
while I write to get free. And my friends
who think they are white, read this
teary-eyed, and feel unimplicated
in the bizarre shadow of their guilt,
—what could have been courage.
When was the last time you chose
a glass of pinot over fair pay?
Or convenience that casually poisons
our parents with pesticides?
What is a future? I am terrified
of what white people choose to look at.
My family worked as farmworkers.
Desperate, they hurt each other,
beat their children out of pain
then went to bed on a dirt floor.
Would you regard this
acknowledgement as redeeming,
or exactly what you thought:
—a shame, fascinating—art?
What does
your creativity look like?
I cannot shed this resentment
that we are not taught
to love ourselves even though
it can change the world.
My friend Baleja, said
yesterday: When I write
I’m going back to the part of me
that didn’t do better.
Not once have I heard any
of my white friends say that.