JACQUELINE ROSADO

Some Years Ago My Mother Was Possessed

PUBLISHED IN FOLIO 2024: VOL. 39.

My mother shaved her head and performed an ugliness
in the kitchen, an exorcism of Cunt and Bitch. She heard
our shadows say Ugly and committed to form. My father and I learned
to bear witness to primitive ways for recognition, we tried to see a woman
asking for help. We wore masks and asked any god to take her
out from a history of tongues that saw us as ungrateful. I was sorry
that this was the first time I loved her. She wanted to live
in a dead house with liver for dinner, only speaking in goodbyes.
For years I had wanted the truth. He almost divorced her. Tried to shut off
all water and cement in the doors. But my father watched me,
as he took her head into his hands and shaved the stray patches of her hair off.

Jacqueline Rosado is a poet currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at FAU, where she also teaches English Composition and Creative Writing. She has been part of the Kenyon Review Winter Workshops for nonfiction, and Eckerd College’s Writers in Paradise Workshop for poetry. She is a glam girl enthustiast who believes that all poems are love poems.