In Cognate

The cognate hides in plain sight 
little spies everywhere, no sense
without them. Legislation of barbarous
imperialism in dull black ink the letters
remain the same. It is the order
of letters that renders meaning.
It is the order of letters that renders 
the mule deer standing in the desert
from the excavator clearing the desert.
The brain moves somewhere in between
English and Spanish. I say English words
as if in Spanish. I say Spanish words as if
in English. I am looking for slender
& curvaceous spies that carry the keys
to many houses. Some spies are a perfect
mirror that show the body move across 
a tiled hall. Some spies are a true mirror
that show the face refracted, yet whole. 
The face still recognizable. Some spies 
are false as the mirror desilvering
in the bathroom. Who can understand
the cognate except for those who search
for the familiar in the shape
of the foreigner’s mouth? A boy is hit on
the head with the bore of a gun.
Out of the boy’s head, up in the air,
his cognates float. The boy bleeds
& his cognates do not leave his side.
The cognates must report what is happening
to the boy. Some say they cannot understand
even the most perfect cognate. They cannot
understand the most perfect cognate
if it is pronounced with an accent,
with an accent mark, in an unfamiliar place.
Who am I to translate that which requires
no translation? The cognate is no citizen,
but a cognate will split the land & taint it 
black with bollards tall as the letters
in the congressional bill it calls home.
I am trying to better understand why
the cognate is important. It is important
because it is like the coyote in the road—
a trickster, always watching. The cognate
writes its own text, a text only a brain
that breaks English & Spanish can decipher.
I go through the house with a flashlight
searching for the circuit breaker. I find
the circuit breaker hidden in my chest.
Only through the vinegared mirror
can I flip the switches of my chest plate
Each switch is labeled only in perfect
cognates. The cognates reach out
of my chest, into the mirror, and back
again deep into my throat, which utters:
cognato, cognato, cognato. Do you know
what I mean when I say espejo avinagrado?
Do you know that kind of clean, the smell?
No, you do not know what I mean
because it cannot be expressed in cognates,
it remains stunted in the rock of translation.
Can’t you pull every word from the rock
of translation and watch it float to the heaven
of meaning? No, as long as the cognate exists
it will run, tunnel, & swim across languages
to a more perfect meaning. Do not trust
the cognate no matter how identical.
The cognate is not two identical twin bodies.
The cognate is one body at odds with the world.
I am a mother who births in lines of cognates.
The men in my family are an afterthought
in their death. What I mean is when the men
in my family throw a porcelain dish on the kitchen
floor we ask: Who is this boy’s mother?
The father’s agnate survives in only one language.
The mother’s cognate is fluent in death & dying.
The cognate knows no bastards. The cognate
knows all her children because she grew them
in her capacious womb. Little boy, who dreams
himself a king at the tiniest kitchen table,
it is your mother who knows how best to wound
you with her cognate tongue. It is the agnate
that separates, it is the cognate that unifies.
If we built languages in the shape
of our cognate mothers, who would we be?
My wish for my cognate mother is the same
as for my birth mother, who calls me crying
on the phone every night. I wish my mother
the bravery to exist beyond her frame of agnates. 
Yet I, too, am a mother framed by agnates.
A mother of men who, singular in their meaning,
orbit me. Can you hear my inner cognate whisper
through the mirror’s gleam: I require no translation.