Mother Tongue | Sara Burnett

Sara Burnett's poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Poet Lore, The Cortland Review, and elsewhere. She holds a MFA in poetry from the University of Maryland and a MA in English Literature from the University of Vermont. She is a recipient of Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference work-study scholarships to support her writing. She lives in Silver Spring, MD with her husband and daughter and blogs on writing, art, and parenting at www.writingwhileparenting.blogspot.com.     Two Parties - Havana, 1959Here is a birthday party;my tía, 15, stands behind her cake,family flanked at her sidesas she holds the knife steady, making a precise incisionlike a surgeon into her patientsplayed on a glass table with miniature white roses and palm fronds as if the tablewere an altar, and the cake, a sacrificial offering;my abuela and cousins besidesmile for what seems a likely eternity or as long as it takes a camera in those days to flash,and Tío Pablo wears sunglassesnext to abuelo, who cracks a grin like a r