Gingerbread Woman
- May 6, 2020
- 2 min read
by Elsa Valmidiano
What little fires snake their way around my neck and across my collarbones where brunswick green tendrils of my mother’s ancestors bear grief and guerilla gunshots, and intersect into the starlight auburn lane of my father’s ancestors who cloak crimes of rape by revered great-uncles with cool repose.
The formulas of my mother and father clap together, swirl, and then combust into this little fire that is my body, my hands, my head.
Who am I kidding when I think of my parents spiraling from two different planets as if they never belonged together,
and yet here I am, gingerbread-woman carrying their pleasant success with gumdrop buttons as if I am not a mess but a perfect little treat, where the curly brunswick green of my mother’s side and the smooth auburn of my father’s side all clash under my skin while I try to recall each of their region’s love songs.
What part of my arm do I call my mother’s? What part of my leg do I call my father’s? And what part of everything leftover belongs to me?
Philippine-born and LA-raised, Elsa Valmidiano is a writer and poet who calls Oakland home. Her works have appeared or are forthcoming in various literary journals such as TAYO, make/shift, Burner, As/Us, Literature for Life, Mud Season Review, Yes Poetry, Northridge Review, Memoir Magazine, Cosmonauts Avenue, Anomaly, Cherry Tree, and Canthius, as well as various anthologies such as Field of Mirrors, Walang Hiya, Circe’s Lament, Precipice, Loon Magic and Other Night Sounds, and What God Is Honored Here. Elsa is an alum of the DISQUIET International Literary Program in Lisbon and Summer Literary Seminars hosted in Tbilisi. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College and has performed numerous readings. She is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee. A recipient of the Editors’ Choice selection from the Many Voices Project competition in Prose sponsored at Minnesota State University Moorhead, Elsa’s debut essay collection, We Are No Longer Babaylan, is slated for publication by New Rivers Press in Fall 2020.
