Becka Mara McKay
A Partial History of Our Silence in the Diaspora
As children we learned to swamp our canoes and breathe
beneath the metal homes we’d made, but I wouldn’t
shape myself into echoes when required. Screaming
is not in my nature so I tried living without
angering others. I see the wrongness in it now,
aluminum tongue trapped in a brackish mouth.
Our clumsiness was born of our impatience and
our impatience began in all the northern lakes
hungering for our voices to wake them and see.
Becka Mara McKay is a poet and translator. She directs the Creative Writing MFA at Florida Atlantic University, where she serves as faculty advisor to Swamp Ape Review. Recent work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Greensboro Review, Witness, RHINO, and Bennington Review. Her latest book of poetry is The Little Book of No Consolation (Barrow Street Press).