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Photo by Alsy Acevedo/CRS |
SUNDAY MORNING by Maya Reyes
the same as every sunday
my mother asks me to go to church with her
and forgetting my baptism and communion and catholic guilt
I quickly decline and she slowly wilts into disappointment
yes, my mother is a flower
who has bloomed, given up, been devoured
by guerrilla warfare and coup d'etats
by a cold, cold world who seemed to have forgot
that she was only blooming
and as reagan and romney promised champagne to trickle down like rain
on a famined nation
they funded slaughter and rape under the tin roofs of my mother's town
blood stained cotton gowns of girls she went to school with
and so she emigrated to the country that enabled her suffering
freedom pending, freedom assumed, freedom buffering
and she joined the sea of thankless 9-5
except my mother starts her day at 4 in the morning
rising unseen, as history is forming all she has been through into nothing
so getting up early for church on sundays isn't much to her
but mom i don't know whether i'm amazed or disappointed
that you can still believe in anything
because america, someone else's beautiful, funded your destruction
so where was God when the soldiers raped the girls in El Salvador
and where was God when they shot Salvador Allende
and where was God when we funded apartheid
and where is God when we commit cultural genocide
and where is God when we torture innocent people
for information that will never matter
my views are scattered
i want to believe that there is something beyond this
but there is no circle of hell deep enough for a racist
or a president whose drones kill children
or companies who make money off of illegal settlements
or people who have all of the evidence
but choose to keep quiet
we can't expect a riot to just happen
we need to mobilize ourselves before they dissolve us
into numb, proud citizens
and praying won't stop our taxes from deepening the wounds of victims
it’s funny how those who have seen want to be blind
so mom, it's going to have to be a no again
i can't go to church with you this sunday
because if there's anything i believe in
it's the power of a determined people
not of any divine priest under a steeple
---
Poem performed at Bowdoin College, May 4, 2013 by the author. Reprinted here with her permission.
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