I fell in love with a dreamer,
Making his wishes on the stars
And stripes, but no longer silently waiting
For an answer.

*

“I don’t remember much about México.
The stairs to our home descended beneath the street,
A hidden cave carved into the earth.
My tears turned the floor to blood.”

*

We will immediately terminate
President Obama’s two illegal executive amnesties.

He defied federal law
And the Constitution

To give amnesty to 5 million illegal immigrants.

*

My father says it will be a “merit-based system,”
Almost like he’s trying to convince himself, knowing
If I lose this, there are many things I cannot forgive:

I started learning Spanish
Just in case.
I almost convince myself that it’s to talk to his mother but

He leaves open a page on his laptop.
The Spanish military offers citizenship in exchange for service and

He asks me to run away with him, to Canada or France,
Pretends he’s only teasing,
But his eyes are serious when

Drunk on seven-dollar wine, he asks me to marry him.
There’s no hesitation when I answer
Yes, despite knowing that

Our love is built on contingency plans.

*

“There were at least ten layers of people in the truck,
All stacked on top of each other.
My mother was in the middle but she still felt it—
The concavity of her lungs under the weight
Of all those dreams.”

*

“Nunca he sido bueno con las palabras,” I say,
The syllables clumsy on my tongue,
Consonants crashing together, vowels catching on my teeth.

He kisses me and tells me my accent is terrible.

*

“When border control came, someone hid
Me and my sister in a tree. My mother
Couldn’t find us. The others tried to silence her but
Her screams still echo in my chest. How can anyone
Understand that kind of fear unless they’ve lived it?”

*

They are here illegally.
They shouldn’t be very worried.

I do have a big heart.

We’re going to take care of everybody.
We’re going to have a very strong border.
We’re going to have a very solid border.

*

“Eres lo que siempre a querido,” he says.
“Te amo, te amo, te amo.”

Gilman takes on the voice of a housewife, initially forming the home as a “dear-loved dwelling place,” declaring “Why should I ever weary for aught that I find not here?” (lines 3-4). She argues that within the house is her “lord and [her] love” and “[her] children dear,” the people for whom she labors (line 2). However, this optimistic view of her role within the home breaks down by the second stanza, unable to sustain itself for long. She soon finds herself “bound with the bands of Duty, rivetted tight” and unable to escape the role she has been wedged into (line 6). Rather than seeing her labor as enjoyable, she characterizes herself as a “serving squaw,” comparing her plight to the oppression of Native American women pressed into servitude (line 8). She despairs in the seemingly endless routine of the same tasks, saying that she oversees the “soiling and cleaning of things… Soil them and clean them and soil them — soil them and clean them again” (lines 11-12). This cycle is inescapable and mundane, a repetition that is observable in the quatrains of the poem. Much like the housewife, the poem is stuck in a repetitive cycle of four lines. She desperately attempts to maintain the cycle, her only hope “a possible love and praise” from those for whom she performs the labor (line 16). There seems to be an undercurrent of despair, acknowledging that the likelihood of this “love and praise” will not come, as she performs “invisible labor” which is often overlooked (line 16).

Consistent with the Realism and Naturalism period, Gilman takes advantage of the “pronounced sense of poetry’s potential as a cultural force of critique and expressive empowerment” in order to argue for the liberation of women(American Women’s Poetry 14). By displaying the negative side of mother and wifehood, she brings to light the struggles of women confined to the home. Gilman is far from the only feminist interacting with poetry in this way: “Poetry’s engagement with the eruptive force of feminism… [emerged] most visibly and vocally during two iterations of feminist movements in the 1900s and 1910s… linking the political to the personal” (American Women’s Poetry 17). This poem takes the “personal,” the experiences of nearly every woman of the period, and invokes a political stance condemning the gender norms this system is rooted in. In her final stanza, Gilman invokes the strength of women in her characterization of the housewife as “the Mother of Nations!”– subverting the existing power dynamic and imagining a future which grants women agency over their labor (line 19).

The Housewife— Charlotte Anna Perkins Gilman

Here is the House to hold me — cradle of all the race;
Here is my lord and my love, here are my children dear —
Here is the House enclosing, the dear-loved dwelling place;
Why should I ever weary for aught that I find not here?

Here for the hours of the day and the hours of the night;
Bound with the bands of Duty, rivetted tight;
Duty older than Adam — Duty that saw
Acceptance utter and hopeless in the eyes of the serving squaw.

Food and the serving of food — that is my daylong care;
What and when we shall eat, what and how we shall wear;
Soiling and cleaning of things — that is my task in the main —
Soil them and clean them and soil them — soil them and clean them again.

To work at my trade by the dozen and never a trade to know;
To plan like a Chinese puzzle — fitting and changing so;
To think of a thousand details, each in a thousand ways;
For my own immediate people and a possible love and praise.

My mind is trodden in circles, tiresome, narrow and hard,
Useful, commonplace, private — simply a small back-yard;
And I the Mother of Nations! — Blind their struggle and vain! —
I cover the earth with my children — each with a housewife’s brain.