Poem of the Week | July 20, 2026

Tiffany Mi is a poet and Kundiman South Regional Co-Chair from Texas. Her work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, The Missouri Review, and Nimrod International Journal and has been supported by the Stadler Center for Poetry, Brown Arts Institute, and Brown University, where she received an MFA in Literary Arts.

“spain and explaining” by Tiffany Mi is our Poem of the Week.

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spain and explaining

my flatmate said listen, said I was cooking the rice wrong. but, I said, I’ve done it before—no, she said, I’ve done it a thousand times before. but, I said, this is how my ancestors did it—she returned to her stew. we sat down—we changed the topic. she said, no you don’t understand, it was robert who was assassinated. I said, robert was assassinated too but it was john in dallas—no, she said, john was assassinated too but in dallas it was robert. but, I said, I’m from—listen, she said, I was, we were alive at that time and you weren’t even born yet. she pointed at her brother as she started that sentence and to me as she ended it. they were both standing now. they were still under franco when john or robert was assassinated. they had the same eyes—unsurprising for siblings—but their difference was more apparent and for some reason I couldn’t name it. I saw the soft undersides of their chins and looked down out of respect. the rice didn’t look right. had I forgotten? had I wasted? what would they say, my ancestors from the great famine? what did it mean to listen with an empty mouth? mao’s death was a year after franco’s. a single glance and I knew the chorizo was as perfect as death. as if I weren’t even born yet. yet, two years after this conversation, spain would pass the democratic memory law, decades after the passing of the pact of forgetting. but, what about before? does one pass a law like one passes away? what’s on the other side? how does one hunger for memory? how long does it take? what is taken? is it ever returned? look it up, they said, it’s all there. but I thought they said look up so I did, and in their chins I lost myself for years on end in both directions.

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Author’s Note:

I like to think that the speaker of this poem came from inside the chin of someone who experiences memory as the current moment, which then informs the moment sitting next to that someone or that moment. Perhaps the chin of you who are reading this, or of the last stranger you sat next to, because quite often that is the effect of memory. We are here, recalling that person who, against all odds, became the reason why we are here, recalling even if second- or thirdhand those crimes against humanity, back there. What is the effect of forgetting on purpose, collective amnesia, erasure, making events and people “disappear,” all the synonyms and symptoms? Who are the arbiters? What corollaries can we draw across geographies and timescales, which may not be as linear and distinct as they’ve been made out (by whom?) to be? For example, that which is “forgotten” is often still happening. That which is still happening so far from our everyday lives is at the core of our everyday lives. Who has been inaugurated into “we” and “our,” and among them, who proceeds as if they hadn’t? There is still individual agency (accountability), when it comes to remembering. Who, in the long line of people before you, experienced this in some form—or, who hasn’t? Now that you’re here, too, what are you all standing in line for?