Prologue: Salvadoran Woman’s Lament

Nothing I do will take the war
out of my man.

A war without zones, soldiers raped
his sister at home– then disappeared him.

He returned, his rib cracked,
chest scorched with cigarettes.

The room spins at night, he says.
Last night I held him

to keep him from falling,
he called me a whore.

When at last my man gets out
to become a new man in North America,

when he finds a woman
to take the war out of him,

she will make love to a man
and a monster,

she will rise from the bed,
grenades ticking in her.

Demetria Martinez

This poem was taken from Three Times a Woman.

“Demetria Martínez is an author, activist, lecturer and columnist. Confessions of a Berlitz-Tape Chicana is now out. It won the 2006 International Latino Book Award in the category of best biography.

Her books include the widely translated novel, Mother Tongue (Ballantine), winner of a Western States Book Award for Fiction, and two books of poetry, Breathing Between the Lines and The Devil’s Workshop (Univ. of Arizona Press).