In my recent microreview & interview of José Olivarez’s Citizen Illegal (Haymarket Books), I noted some of the ways the collection interrogates the multiple dualities of the Latinx, specifically Mexican-American, experience. Through word play and rhetorical moves, Olivarez uses his gift of speaking about narratives that often get neglected to present the nuances of language as well as life.
In “My Parents Fold Like Luggage” (below), the speaker is in story mode, presenting a fabulistic interpretation of his parents crossing over the U.S.-Mexico border. It is a narrative of risk as much as deception; these two sources of tension are presented through the speaker’s point of view through the metaphor of folding. Informed by memory, distance, and imagination, this folding turns out some rich moments of language:
my parents protect this moment. this now.
what folds them into the trunk of a Tercel.
the belief that the folding will end.
it doesn’t. dollars fold into bills. my parents
near breaking. broke.
Here, human breaking is folded into financial breaking. So much is riding on this fraught vulnerability, both in the moment and in the larger picture. The distinct punctuation and use of variations on “break” do a great job of evoking what is at stake. One finds a similar turn in the poem’s ending:
from the sky, it is impossible
to hear whether my parents cheer or pray
as the car steals north.
The key word here is “steals,” a word that nods toward the risk and deception of the narrative. Yet it’s the context, “from the sky,” that renders this ending heartbreaking. Not being able to “hear” from the distance of memory creates an engaging ambiguity. In not knowing if they “cheer or pray,” the poem allows those words to live side by side in the poem and moment.
My Parents Fold Like Luggage – José Olivarez
my parents fold like luggage
into the trunk of a Toyota Tercel.
stars glitter against a black sky.
from the sky, the Tercel is a small lady
bug traveling north. from the sky,
borders do not exist. the Tercel stops
in front of a man in green. stars glitter
like broken glass. the night so heavy
it chokes. in the trunk, it is starless.
my parents protect this moment. this now.
what folds them into the trunk of a Tercel.
the belief that the folding will end.
it doesn’t. dollars fold into bills. my parents
near breaking. broke. they protect what might
unfold them to discover they are six:
a family. if the man in green opens the trunk,
the road folds back. this moment & everything
that follows disappears into the ink of a police report.
why doesn’t he open the trunk? my parents say
god blessed us. maybe they are right,
but i think about that night & wonder where
god was—a million miles away in the stars,
in the shared breath between my parents, maybe
everywhere. maybe nowhere. from the sky,
the man in green is so small it is impossible
to see him wave. from the sky, it is impossible
to hear whether my parents cheer or pray
as the car steals north.
*
To learn about José Olivarez’s work, check out his site.
The poem below – “Haute Couture” – is a good example of the formal conversation that underlies House of McQueen. This poem takes on the acrostic form by taking a quote from McQueen himself – “At the end of the day they’re only clothes” – and placing each word of it as the first word of each line. This form suits the overall vision of House of McQueen in a number of ways. First, by the very nature of the acrostic form, we have McQueen’s voice embedded in the body of the poem however indirectly. Also, that the quote itself can be read vertically while Wallace’s poem can be read horizontally echoes the way Wallace “reads” into McQueen’s work both here and throughout her collection.
The Influence 