"Father replays the funeral in Dream #28" by Margo Tamez

[View this email on a browser]( [Forward to a friend]( [facebook-icon]( [tumblr-icon]( [twitter-icon]( September 10, 2019 [Father replays the funeral in Dream #28]( [Margo Tamez]( Shame forces what we denied into luminosity. In dream my father tells me my mother’s grieving prevents momentum. He’s projecting thoughts to a screen for me to read. I’m at his private film of captivity. He’s watching us. We’re hunched over heaving the sorrow vomit. Father stands before me time without fear suspended and apart unafraid of anything one way or another. “When did they cut it?” he wants to know pushing the thought into space between my eyes. Raising his pant leg where the mortician smoothed and stretched the salvage skin Father used for padding his below-knee amputation hovering inches above the ground glints in his eyes. He doesn’t remember the amputation in the bending. Father shows me his whole leg. Scars mended and smooth. He is an uncut body again. Like before the bending place. Only the graft scars on his thighs remain. He projects: “I feel my leg here Margo my foot still itches here” Father points: “in this empty space” he twirls his fingers a slow spiral. I nod to him: “I see. I’ll remember this for you.” [Like this on Facebook]( [Share via Twitter]( Copyright © 2019 Margo Tamez. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 10, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets. [Tamez reads "Father replays the funeral in Dream #28."]( About This Poem “My father, Luis Carrasco Tamez, Jr., (1935-1996), visited me in dreams between November 1996 and September 2001. Lingering memories of what he said pressured me to (re)visit intimate familial places in Lipan Apache (Ndé) homelands, in South Texas, where he appeared. His spatial time-bending emplaced a pictorial language, helping me decipher historical violence felt by Ndé of Texas, and lingering impacts of historical trauma which saturate Ndé storied landscapes continually obscured by aggressive settler colonial erasure. Spirit memory as sentience, landguage, place, despair—the collective internalization of Indigenous spatial exile—influence my understanding of my father’s refusal. This poem, echoing post-memory of Ndé intergenerational genocide survivors, explores how historical memory of violence disturbs linear structures which have denied Indigenous peoples’ our lived experiences—even after death.” —Margo Tamez [Margo Tamez]( Margo Tamez is the author of Raven Eye (University of Arizona Press, 2007) and Naked Wanting (University of Arizona Press, 2003). She is a faculty member in the Indigenous Studies program at the University of British Columbia | Unceded Syilx Territory | Okanagan campus, in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada and lives at Nk ̓maplqs il n ̓sis ̓oolax̌ʷ, British Columbia, Canada. [Raven Eye]( Poetry by Tamez [Raven Eye]( (University of Arizona Press, 2007) "My Father as Cartographer" by Natasha Trethewey [read-more]( "Kissing My Father" by Joseph O. Legaspi [read-more]( "Becoming Ghost" by Cathy Linh Che [read-more]( September Guest Editor: Eduardo C. Corral Thanks to [Eduardo C. Corral](, author of Guillotine, forthcoming from Graywolf Press in 2020, who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s weekdays. Read a [Q&A with Corral]( about his curatorial approach this month and find out more about our [guest editors for the year.]( Your Support Makes Poem-a-Day Possible Poem-a-Day is the only digital series publishing new, previously unpublished work by today’s poets each weekday morning. This free series, which also features a curated selection of classic poems on the weekends, reaches 450,000+ readers daily. [make a one-time donation]( [illustration]( [Small-Blue-RGB-poets.org-Logo]( Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit [Poets.org](. You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click [here](. © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038