Melanin Inheritance

By Anita Cantillo

Issue 46 • Fall 2022 • Poetry

1st Place Poetry

2022 Summer Contest

Some poems reach deeply into the ground of daily living, and offer what they bring upward from the depths. This is one such poem, and I can’t help but read it as the pivot-point of this poet’s work. This poem also reminded of what Muriel Rukeyser once said: “Breathe in experience, breathe out poetry.” The action springs from a white son asking his mother why her skin is brown, and the ripples cast out from there are quietly, astoundingly revealed to us readers. Like the best poems, this meditation on origins, race, memory, and inheritance, arises from the simplest of interactions, an innocent question asked by a child of his mother. I am also struck by how these lines move seamlessly in time, giving us not just a full picture of the present moment with vivid sensory details, but also a glimpse into the past, as the speaker says with full authority: “I speak of native things.” That phrase, and this poem as a whole, remains so resonant I have carried it with me long after the first reading. “Melanin Inheritance” was a clear winner for me—timely, universal, and relevant to anyone with a family.

– James Crews

When my son asks why my skin is brown, I am thrown,
left breathless by the ordinariness of his question. Its lack of presumption.

I go back to a gossamer half-memory of my own mother.
Glass rosary beads corded around her wrist.
Her fingers interlaced with mine, she turns our palms,
traces our life lines. She is deep in comparison.
Quietly, she says soy negra.

I do not remember, but feel certain
my Spanish faltered. Maybe I said no, eres tan.
And this is where the memory breaks,

and I am back now, with my son,
but still haunted by that diaphanous memory.
In the impermanence of this place, the television plays something
but the sound has gone hollow, as if I am underwater.

I reach for stories to explain me, talk of coconuts that fall from palms,
coffee beans that roast on sunned beds of wood and tin,
I talk of yucca root. Tecate trees. Howler monkeys,
maiden voyages made by leatherbacks.

I speak of native things

so he understands the origin
of my brownness is his origin, too.
Even if his own hands, white
like beaches I have known,
deny it.

Anita Cantillo

Anita Cantillo is the pen name of Shawn Bowers, and there’s a funny story behind it, but we don’t have that kind of time. Anita/Shawn was born in Costa Rica and currently resides in Charlotte, NC where she teaches in the English Department at Queens University of Charlotte. Her work has appeared in Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Juke Joint, Pilgrimage, and Azahares, among other journals.

Edward Lee

Edward Lee is an artist and writer from Ireland. His paintings and photography have been exhibited widely, while his poetry, short stories, non-fiction have been published in magazines in Ireland, England and America, including The Stinging Fly, Skylight 47, Acumen and Smiths Knoll. He is currently working on two photography collections: ‘Lying Down With The Dead’ and ‘There Is A Beauty In Broken Things’. He also makes musical noise under the names Ayahuasca Collective, Orson Carroll, Lego Figures Fighting, and Pale Blond Boy. His blog/website can be found at https://edwardmlee.wordpress.com