The Peanut Butter Mask Poem by Maria Pilar Conn

My mother never fit in.She was a foreigner that stayed a foreigner.
Always looking out of place between the corn and the hogs.
Dad was a mechanic that belonged.
He plucked a foreign flower, in a foreign land,
and spent his life trying to plant her in different places in Indiana.
My mother never grew roots.
If a strong wild wind came she would tilt the one side or the other.
Dad was always trying to set her upright.
The worst was the summer family picnic, all one hundred percent blue-collar.
Mom looking like an exotic flower out of place.
A Tupperware filled with paella.
We would stay close to her at these times; I have mentioned this before.
Probably thinking that she would fit in more, surrounded by her half breed daughters.
Once, I saw her face covered in peanut butter.
She saw my surprise and while she inhaled deeply of the oily mask,
her eyes watering,
she fingered her face and licked her finger clean.
She said: "Doesn´t matter what I do.I am a foreigner".