{"id":58,"date":"2011-07-01T00:15:26","date_gmt":"2011-07-01T00:15:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/requitedarchive.wordpress.com\/?p=58"},"modified":"2021-08-04T19:21:11","modified_gmt":"2021-08-04T19:21:11","slug":"excerpts-from-claim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/2011\/07\/01\/excerpts-from-claim\/","title":{"rendered":"excerpts from Claim"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

These pages are excerpts from a larger project called Claim,<\/em> a hybrid poetry\/prose and text\/image work that began as an oral history project tracking the author’s family\u2019s migrations through Europe, the Middle East and the Americas. It became an exploration of memory and the language used to claim identity, history, and place. Much of the language is “found” or gleaned from these interviews. As a whole, the piece asks questions about nationalism, land ownership and intergenerational trauma. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

families\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0spread slow\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0spilled water\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 cross, leak, seep\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0terrains <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Dear Nation, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bread your Sunday morning, your pioneer beginning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Will not be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n

Dear Nation,<\/p>\n

What is claim, what is anchor?<\/p>\n

What myth stitches
history to place?<\/p>\n

What stitch
myths people
to nation?<\/p>\n

Where is the road?
What are the names?<\/p>\n

What is
the land like?<\/p>\n

What anchor, what root?<\/p>\n

What un-
peopled soil?<\/p>\n

Where is the road?<\/p>\n

Parched mouth of memory.<\/p>\n

Loosen wrought letters,
Pull up soft plots.<\/p>\n

Pull up soft plots.
A shovel, no lantern.<\/p>\n

What anchor, what
claim?<\/p>\n

Someone extends a hand.<\/p>\n

What root?<\/p>\n

their trans-Atlantic journey<\/p>\n

mother (theirs) taught her daughters (mother, mine) the Latin alphabet<\/p>\n

mothered the Latin alphabet
alphabet becomes new home<\/p>\n

Romanian, German, and Hebrew they had already stitched<\/p>\n

roofs of their mouths
spoken becomes roof<\/p>\n

my grandmother traced the letters:
round vowel bellies\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0rock of tide
sharp-ended\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0consonants\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0ship\u2019s mast<\/p>\n

letters become a boat, take from and towards<\/p>\n

going to<\/p>\n

mother (mine) envisioned grandeur of New York,\u00a0golden plains of Texas, California sun<\/p>\n

imagined speaking English all glamour (hers) grandeur (nation)
hard, blocky, words like the movies<\/p>\n

mother (theirs) revealed America approaching (theirs) was South<\/em> America<\/p>\n

language was Spanish<\/em><\/p>\n

long rock of tide, of seasick nights<\/p>\n

Dear Immigrant,
Try on the tongues. You\u2019ll find no war here.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tumble of language, a word un-tongued.<\/p>\n

Pride reaches,\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0lingers,\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0dangles<\/p>\n

off<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

SONNET I.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I dream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sit on the sand bed and watch<\/p>\n\n\n\n

the bottom of that freighter cut blue<\/p>\n\n\n\n

pull, touch its hydraulic rudder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Salt of story on sea-lips, its many passengers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Outside the dream, up above<\/p>\n\n\n\n

the brackish water<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wince at recognition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What roots run between body continents, seabeds?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hesitate to name, be named. I is fiddled,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

fidgeted, wants Atlantic anonymity, an us<\/p>\n\n\n\n

of swept breath. No-name drifts between<\/p>\n\n\n\n

them and I, between I<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and brine and algae.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Rachel grew up in West Texas, where parched land scrolls out endlessly, everything a shade of distance. She tells me over many years of friendship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Four generations knuckle-bound to land that grabbed and held. An old rancher once told her: \u201cOut here it\u2019s impossible to be lonely. The land walking beside you is your oldest friend, like already you’ve told the best stories and each of you knows how much the other made up.\u201d A yawning sky, a hotfoot sun, horizon line a crease beyond. These are her drawling plains, cowboy bodies desert stiff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rachel\u2019s mother has lived through three fires. Charred remains of memory across brittle blackened land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her mother, reaching tongue of an agave plant, rising slow from a crack in the dust. Her mother, blooming into woman, walking the desert earth, curving where the dunes flatten, skin spackled macula.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the fire. Photographs disintegrating into tumbling ash, memories liquefied to plaster and molasses. Bare feet scorched by flame, flames licking the walls of the house, each glowing ember a year of her life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anchor to ground. What root?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Things fall away. Tongues of red blaze. Tin pot enveloped in soot. Nightgown hem smolder-curled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Dear Immigrant,
Claim ownership to overlay.
Lay heaviest of roots
of skin and ground and steady
of knuckle-bound beginning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

POSTCARD I.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sambath, born in a refugee camp on the Thai\/Cambodian border, says \u201cSearching desperately for ancestry is a common trait of white Americans. Your identity is built on the backs of others, your land, your stories, even your memories are stolen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

How do you write yourself out of a myth?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Words are permeable, punctures in the sieve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

POSTCARD III.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Camilo, born of a Cuban woman and a Brooklyn Jew, says \u201cBeing Jewish is almost a synonym for cultural hybrid or nomad: so many of us have more than one cultural identity, and have been waging cultural, political battles within our families for a clearer definition of our legacy as a people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n

Something will stand here,<\/em>
rafters, pretext, bedrock<\/p>\n

they say we speak in finger-flight
dextrous gestures, roaming motions<\/p>\n

\u201cAn architect builds structures of their hands,\u201d she observes<\/p>\n

calculated dialect, born angles, apex, slant
hands to serve as bricks and beams<\/p>\n

\u201cYour mother, my sister, they do the same thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

make roof, knit flat-palm, interstice
make burgeoning geometry
gable tented two hand fold<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Dear Immigrant,
Lay heaviest of roots
of skin and ground and steady
of knuckle-bound beginning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Claim land claim home claim country
claim natural claim tongue<\/p>\n\n\n\n

take hold<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and build.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

I have never been from any one place <\/em>she says, When I was learning Hebrew, we spoke Rumanian at home. When I was learning Spanish, we spoke Hebrew at home. When I was learning English, we spoke Spanish at home. It\u2019s like I could never catch up fast enough. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Threads of language unravel before my mother, her busy fingers try to braid them. Wind-blown, untamed threads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

undone        un-there    a bag of dried beans<\/p>\n\n\n\n

un-peopled                or grains of rice<\/p>\n\n\n\n

glassy marbles    un-tongued<\/p>\n\n\n\n

tip over and spill out<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

M\u00f3nica Gomery<\/strong> lives in Boston, MA. She is a graduate of the Creative Writing program at Goddard College, and the Drisha Institute Arts Fellowship. Her writing has appeared in Shearsman Magazine, Scythe, Shadowtrain, Word For\/Word,<\/em> and Bridges Journal<\/em>. She co-founded and co-edited Never on Time Journal<\/em>, a community poetry project in Philadelphia. Most recently she is studying ancient languages and learning how to pray, en route to rabbinical school.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

These pages are excerpts from a larger project called Claim, a hybrid poetry\/prose and text\/image work that began as an oral history project tracking the author’s family\u2019s migrations through Europe, the Middle East and the Americas. It became an exploration<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":384,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9926],"tags":[22085],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/384"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1796,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions\/1796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}