I don't understand this poem, and I read it about 5 times.
Making a fist
For the first time, on the road north of Tampico
I felt the life sliding out of me
a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear
I was seven, I lay in the car
watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern
past the glass
My stomach was a melon split wide inside
my skin
How do you know if you are going to die?"
I begged my mother
We had been traveling for days
With strange confidence she answered
"When you can no longer make a fist."
Years later I smile to think of that journey
the borders we must cross separatley,
stamped with our umaswerable woes
I who did not die, who am still living,
still lying in the backseat behind all my questions
clenching and opening one small hand.
This poem is about life. You make a fist when you are ready to fight. Her mom tells her to keep fighting. The poem is about fighting for what you believe in, what you think is right. Life has the good and the bad, but as long as you can fight back you are still living.
When you were a little kid, were you ever terribly carsick in the back seat of a car...so carsick you felt like dying might be a good thing?
That would be a scary experience to a child...and her mom reassured her by telling her that so long as she could "make a fist" ( fight against adversity) she would be alright.
There is a lot of adversity in life that we don't always have control over, (being in the backseat- not "driving"). But she is still making a fist; she is going to be alright.
I don't understand what you don't understand!!
http://www.uncp.edu/home/canada/work/markport/best/study/poetry.htm
Use the directions in this webpage for reading a poem and understanding it. Make sure you know the meanings of all words; make sure you know who the speaker is; make sure you know the surface level of the poem -- the story of it. You need to know all those things before you can try to understand any deeper meanings.