This poem, Where My Birthmark Dances, which also lends its name to a poetry collection of mine, is voiced by a Haitian child whose mother has left both her and Haiti to seek economic opportunity in North America as a nanny. The poem directly addresses the children now in her mother’s care, inviting them to consider who she is, where she comes from, what she has left behind, and the physical journey that brought her to them.
Where My Birthmark Dances is a direct appeal from a daughter, a child herself, to those children: an invitation to know her mother, and to love her mother in the daughter’s absence. Click below to listen to an audio rendering of this poem
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