silueta

---

by Margalit Katz

---

“In Cuba when you die
the earth that covers us
speaks.

But here,
covered by the earth whose prisoner I am
I feel death palpitating underneath”
–Ana Mendieta, 1981

I sculpted my body into exile,
packed mounds of beige
cracked by sun’s scorch
and the tide’s anxious rumbling.
my body
was a 5-foot measure
I used to build
and bury my own casket

which is to say,
I bought flowers at the market,
lay in the tomb and
was covered.
my knuckles probed
where the contour of
my body
would one day be beaten
back into earth.

the neighbors heard
my screams shatter
seconds before
he flung me
out
of that
34-story window
before
they heard
my skull
crack.

they examined the snakeskin I shed,
the emptiness of
my body,
pressed a glass to the door but
heard no voice speak,
disinterred his DNA from
under my fingernails.

know that I was made afraid
of greatness,
its human gesture
toward gravity.
I believe in water,
air and earth,
but you all still believe in great men.
you still hold his name like a baby mouse
you carry in your mouths,
let mine seep into the sidewalk
to wait for a witness.

I dug my grave
over and
over and
over

so someone would watch
when spume pooled
inside my margins,
faded my form aflame
until I was just a crevice
until they washed me away

---

Margalit Katz was raised on unceded Lenape territory and currently teaches English as a Fulbright fellow in Aguascalientes, Mexico, ancestral homeland of the Caxcán people. They received their BA in Spanish and Anthropology from Wesleyan University, attended the 2023 Summer Graduate Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, and received a partial fellowship from Brooklyn Poets in 2024. Their work can be found or is forthcoming in Capacious: Journal for Emerging Affect Inquiry, SLANT and Stonecoast Review.

---