A pomegranate
is opened like this:
gutted like a fish,
its entrails glow.

Spill out the millions

of seeds who crouch
and hurt like your mother—
Suck them dry

and your tongue
will grow small
as you learn to shrink

before children, waving your hands
before their glossy eyes

This is the taste
of memory, sweet pluck of
death. Later, teach them
to eat as you have, the broken

fruit flesh of your own
body, its hard growths tart
in your mouth, nervous and rising.

“Learning to Eat” is the opening poem of Sasha Pimentel Chacon’s American Book Award winning debut Insides She Swallowed.

Street where in 1911
Olof, the carpetmill foreman, choked
to death a seamstress with his free hand
behind a Warburton Ave. barn.
The next morning they found him
gulping milk from a bottle
on a  Bear Mountain slope.

Streets like pieces of broken scaffolding
hanging from a skyscraper
after the mind gets what’s coming to it
for climbing too high.

Street lined with trees
on which a child burns her hand
in a rag-pile fire while off to the side
a pagoda door swings open and tiny bells ring.

Streets leading, every day,
to the same jar of horseradish
spooned clean by an immigrant
who never learned to smile brightly
like Dr. Reiniger, the dentist, said he should.

Street on which children rollerskate
in and out of every sex wish your mama ever had.

Street where paper violets
are placed on dead a gardener’s grave.

Street where you live,
street at the end of which everything ends
when you finally open your eyes.

Lou Hon, Suzie, Cherry, Doughnut, Woody, Wabbit, Jackie,
Rena Mae, Zonnie, Sena, Verna, Grace, Seline, Carilene

“Virginia Spears,” the Algebra teacher calls roll
(Her name is Speans)
And Virgie winces and raises her hand.
“Here.” Soft voice.
&nbspShe never corrects the teachers.

“Leonard T-sosie.”
(His name is Tsosie.) Silent first letter as in ptomaine,
Ptolemy.
Silent as in never asking questions.
Another hand from the back goes up. No voice.

“Mary Lou Yazzy. Are you related to Thomas Yazzy?”
Yazzie is a common Navajo name, like Smith or Jones.
She rhymes it with jazzy and snazzy.
Mary Lou with puzzled expression. “No.”
“Oh, I thought you might be. He’s quiet too.”

I start to tense up because I’m next
with my name that sticks out
like her sensible black high heeled lace-ups
clap, clap, clap down the hall.

“Laura Toe.”
And I start to sink, to dread hearing it on the bus tossed around
&nbsplike kids playing keep-away.
Suddenly we are immigrants,
&nbspwaiting for the names that obliterate the past.

Tohe, from Tóhii means Towards Water.
Tsosie. Ts’ósí means Slender.
And Yazzie, from Yázhí, means Beloved Little One/Son.
The teachers closes the book and
we are little checkmarks besides our names.

Roanhorse, Fasthorse, Bluehorse, Yellowhorse, Begay, Deswod, Niilwod,
Chee, ‘Átsidí, Tapahonso, Háábahh, Hastiin Nééz.

To the Father Whose Five Girls Were Killed in Their Bed
Lauren Camp

How old were they, your girls?
Each one a world, growing into its fields and oceans,

the zigzag of their brown hair
on the pillow, and fingers twisted

between them as they slept
together, in the same bed, passing dreams

into dark, the calm white buds of them.
Oh, your wounded eyes, your screaming;

you will live in the hollow of their room
with the fur of their photos, your heart

in flight, already fighting
the liquid shape of greed,

a spark of madness tight-knotted to your future.
Let go of memory and reason.

It is true you will not sing again
but do not rise from this thing of pain

hurling defeat beyond long ghetto lines
into the families who scarred you.

Others can read your closed face
on every fat day, every too-

bright sun and every silence.
Leaves still cleave to the trees in spring.

That night came on in shades of cinnamon
and tamarind; they were asleep, your girls.

The familiar shape of their small bodies,
let that shape emboss your body, your fingers,

imprint each hair on your breast.
They were asleep, and now you must awaken

into the long angles of the blood-glint sky.
No electricity but the frightening light of loss.

Tell me everything you know
about your girls. Tell me everything,

and then tell me again.
Tell me the burden of your wife’s bearing

of them, how each head crowned, their first cries.
Their innocence will answer.

They left without warning, without
the pinprick of leaving.

Let them become maps and tears
on the broken bridge of your memory,

but oh, their skin, the flower-sweet scent of their skin!
Remember that, in your short history of love.

Dangerous Woman

I’ve got no qualms
on being a woman
no problem with my
swinging hips, paint my lips
a Nefertiti type of chick
a fret-none, foul-mouthed
drink some beer kind of bitch
laugh with the girls
smoldering cigarillo
hangs on hard lips
I’m a quick-wit pessimist
born with a bad disposition
bonding bartenders and
waitress sisterhood
up to no good
that dangerous table
back of the bar shadows
black widows chewing
up men throwing
back beers
half-cocked
cocked rifle
my poem
a revolution
on the horizon
tipsy chatter
shackle-free
of mean daddies
fast-fisted husbands
seventy-cents on the dollar
double standards and
sorry ass sexual innuendoes
scratching where I please
another round of brew, please
remove your hands
from my ass,
please
a tease
stomping through life
squeezed into lean jeans
I’m a contradiction
wearing a barely-there-bra,
bulldozing bullshit,
those that aim
to hurt me
those that aren’t
not knowing
any difference
a hangover of regrets
and smudged mascara
what to do with
this anger
like a man?
this tongue
like a proprietor
of porn?
where do I fit
between dainty decent
and vulgar truth?
saintly and slutty?
maternal and murderous?
Buttof
a cigarette
a beautiful thing
sexy beer bottle
and smoking Marlboro Lights
down to the last stick
last match
last call
I’ve got no qualms
with alcohol
smooth and fluid
ten-feet-tall
heavy-handed eye
shadow hooded lids
sling my arrows aim
to miss
swinging hips
painted lips
dangerous
woman

Here’s an oldie but a goodie. This photo captures three feminist powerhouses, probably at a women’s studies conference in Austin in 1980. From left, Audre Lorde, West End Press author Meridel LeSueur, and Adrienne Rich.

Sasha Pimentel Chacon

El Paso author Sasha Pimentel Chacón recently won the American Book Award from the Before

Columbus Foundation for her West End Press book Insides She Swallowed, a debut collection of thirty-one poems that use rich imagery to explore the human appetites. Chacón draws on metaphors of consumption and sensuality from her family life and Filipino heritage in her work.

“We’re especially pleased that Sasha should win this award, a fitting tribute to a wonderful, strong, audacious voice of the new generation of Filipina writers,” says John Crawford, West End Press publisher.

West End Press has won five American Book Awards in the past, going back to 1984.

Pimentel Chacón holds an MFA in creative writing from California State University, Fresno, and her research includes prosody, poetics, Asian American, Latino/a, immigrant, and women’s literature. Learn more about Sasha and her work at www.sashapimentel.com.