Today I read: Poesîa de Maquiladora by Sheryl Luna, and found several interpretations within myself about the poem's meaning. Generally, when I read a poem, the first time I see it only at face value: The story which I see unfolding is just from the words I choose to hear. The second time I read it, I put pieces together, and by the third time, I look at the language of the poem. The language for this poem, the words are so incredibly deliberate. This poem exemplifies that way of writing. There is a reason for each word used in this poem, from the word Border, to intelligent.
The title, as sheepish as I am to admit it, I had to get translated (via internet... I know, I know) and what I found was: Poesîa de Maquiladora, Poetry of Assembly Plant. That says something there, but the fact that they leave that in Spanish is a very interesting choice, because there are no other spanish words in this piece. This, for me makes the Title seem very important. Normally, I think that I would have just passed by the title, but because it stood out, it gave it a new kind of importance.
Now to the meat of this poem. The poet, Sheryl Luna, uses I for this poem, which again, is a deliberate choice in this poem. In the first stanza we read:

I am swept into a sadness, still
and unspeakable in sterile rooms where
men might as well wear white coats
and drink my breath from stethoscopes

two things immediately catch my attention: One is the form, when she uses the word "still," I notice how it is left aloe there hanging off that comma.... still.
still
and unspeakable.

just the way that it is left there, reading it to yourself or aloud, it makes you pause, creating stillness. The second thing I notice is content: men might as well wear white coats. Sterile rooms, stethoscopes, and yet she is not talking about doctors. These "clinical," words (I'm going to call them,) show up throughout the poem: drain blood, wound, swelled, sick, doctors, patients, sickness, body. And yet, as I mentioned, they are not doctors and this is not about a hospital, or sickness.

I look again to the title: Poesîa de Maquiladora.

She makes me think of working in dingy conditions, of overseers, yet she refers to them as doctors and patients with disdain.

They were so happy to show us
the habits of locusts, drain blood
into plastic bags of their manufacturing.
Tell us, Latina, was it what they
assumed it was, broken language,
poetry of a lesser nature, a wound?

The voice change within the stanza, "Tell us, Latina," As if that is how they are being addressed, and then to go on and talk about "broken language." Broken language and poetry of a lesser nature. There is something here that I am not quite getting. And the way she speaks about manufacturing their blood... it almost seems blatant, yet there is something so esoteric about her language that you would think that she is keeping so much of it a secret, and only hinting at her meaning, which in turn makes this poem extremely powerful. She then hits us with this:

The way my brown knees
slammed hard in the fall
from what was left of grace.

Excuse me? Someone please read that to me again. This poem right here blows my mind, I am lost, I think I understand parts, and then she loses me again. When I first read it, this was my initial impression: (purely face-value) This was a story about person, who was working in a factory, or in some place where there is a overseer type boss, clinical and calculating, demeaning, and this person is reflecting on their life there, but also perhaps hinting at their past, their place of origin:

My body is fading
back to an invisible border.

Because this poem is about a Latina person, I can not help but think of borders and the deliberate intention to end the poem on this note. We are left with the sense of two worlds, but also the different lives that they live in each. It makes me think about the endless trials, obstacles and lives... Lives they must lead here. So when she talks about the doctors, and patients, they way that she insinuates that they have a "sickness," she is referring to her race, or origins, and how that is something that is the "lesser nature," "wound," "sickness." This poem, though deliberate, is not direct, or easy to interpret, even now I wonder if what I am thinking is anywhere near the mark of what it truly means.

I am left with only this:

The way my brown knees
slammed hard in the fall
from what was left of grace.


Ahhhh.


-Bluey, aka Michaela C. Ellis