We don't qualify
You should join the daughters of the American Revolution,
a banker told my sister when the chapter visited her work,
toured the Coast Guard cutter to see where they could hang Christmas stockings
until someone said Church and State, so they bought a hot dog cooker
instead. All very 18th century, but we have a Space Force,
so what the hell–bring on the fudged historical philanthropy,
just frame it with my sister's response to the daughter's suggestion:
our ancestors couldn't be revolutionary patriots
back then because they were a little busy being Mexican.
Kira Córdova
Kira Córdova is an emerging writer and sometimes tall ship sailor from the great seafaring state of Colorado working on an MFA in Nature Writing at Western Colorado University. They have essays and poems upcoming in Chicana/Latina Studies, Cutthroat Journal, and Anger is a Gift: Anthology of Resistance and Response Poems to the 2024 Election from Flowersong Press.
Why this Knocked Taylor Out:
There is a tension in this poem between the historical context of what it means to be Mexican right now, with the snark of the language that really compelled me. The ending is just a total knock-out moment. The ability to understand how other people can be different from us, and still have valuable histories and lives seems to be something that *cough* some people seem to be struggling with.
And in this small space, this poem is managing to hold cultural identity, capitalism, modern politics, historical trauma and humor. The line length allows each sentence or clause to be taken in fully before moving on with a couple of strong enjambments that push pace (“cooker/instead.” for example). The title, “We don’t qualify” is also carrying a ton of weight. As does the “we” not qualify as in they do not matter, or is the “we” unwilling to engage in the qualification of others the way the banker character is? As in we don’t qualify or we don’t qualify. Ending and starting in dialogue allows a world to exist between the call and response.
This is a quick one two punch that left me reeling when it hit my inbox. Really stunning work.
Interview:
Why did you choose Team Taylor for this poem?
I chose Team Taylor for "We don't qualify" because I wrote it to process what we inherit culturally, even when it's invisible. As a white Latine person, I never want to ignore my privilege, but it also leads to some hilarious situations, like this real interaction my twin (a junior officer on a Coast Guard cutter) had with her local DAR chapter. At the time, I was working as a historic interpreter dressed like an 18th century British soldier at a living history museum in New York, and after my sister told me the story, we laughed about the base assumption in the East that anyone white and female-presenting must be able to trace their ancestry to the pilgrims and should join the DAR. I also have to confess to choosing Taylor because of an Italian sonnet I submitted with "We don't qualify" about religious trauma, but with the end rhyme, I knew it would be a hard sell.
I would love for you to talk about the drafting process for this poem, how did it come to be? How did you go about holding tension here?
When I first drafted this poem, the DAR chapter was still only talking about giving my sister's Coast Guard unit Christmas stockings, so I didn't have the line about Church and State yet. Instead, I joked about donating Barbies to the Air Force or 4th of July Sparklers to the DEA, but once they decided on the hot dog cooker, I knew I wanted that layer in the final draft. In the first two drafts, I also had a line about feeling grateful for anyone who wants to take care of my twin, even if it's through odd historical philanthropy and comes with assumptions about ethnicity and ancestry, but it felt clunky and let the DAR off the hook too much. There was also an early line about reading the constitution knowing we have a Space Force that I really wanted to keep since a friend from my writing group who's a veteran laughed out loud when she read it, but ultimately, I felt that with our country's current trend to ignore the 14th amendment, the constitution didn't belong in this conversation. So I guess I went about holding tension mostly by cutting. In the first drafts, I wanted to appeal to humor, but by the final one, I wanted to get to the final lines with as little fluff as possible in their way.
How do you see this poem in conversation with your typical poetic practice?
I normally start most of my poems as American sonnets, so this poem's form is atypical for me, although I really loved getting to the twist sooner, and I plan on doing that more moving forward. I study Nature Writing, but most of my poetry tackles identity and gender, so "We don't qualify" definitely fits that trend, and I hope the humor in this poem makes people read it again and dig into the context.