.png)
object study
ringlets ebb toward
cloth. covered by
dust and beige-silk
stains, eyes projecting
story-scapes. undo
the purple wall. a
body fed is oil, scrubbed
clean. I crave this.
______
time traveler
this is how I remember july:
an old man’s chipped
metal cart
boasting ice cream bins of guava
and piloncillo, that distinct
vanilla bean of yellow
whipped with flecks of black
______
cough sweetness and I’m thrown to
dirt clouds tending abuelo’s land
playing ten-body futbol
me and the
cousins in
a matching
row of overheating
gap sweaters
_____
and we were all afraid of the
granja’s empty hole, a mythical
orifice plagued by endless
superstition
somewhere, a donkey brayed then
I was grown and the granja
was sold back
_____
to airports, seated
up and away ears plugged and heavy
quick adjust to
california gravel and sun
far from this kinship
a yearly confusion
melting any trace of tenacity
that may have been left
in my bones
_____
colima
a child sees volcano sputter and clouds
of grey-black ash
globular whole
to capture the sky would be nice
the child thinks
a child thought to have
staring at cotton eruption threats as the car shoots forward
over a bridge lined
with yellow poles the child counts the gaps
thirty pipes blurring
like calcified striations
fused together in the flash
little does she know
this image will linger in her memory arsenal
decades later little does she know that soon
the highway will become a
forbidden space
absent bodies and siren echoes
etched into the mountain walls
_____
prophecy
i. christening
the oath of a
daughter is
signed in the
womb and
the lamb is
placed neatly
in the crook
of your elbow.
her child
stomach quickly
learns the
sensation of a
knot.
a counterfeit
foot-cleanse,
bogged down by
the altarpiece
script reciting
its wants into
the soft parts of
her tendons. this
is an aqueduct
of miracles, an
endless flow of roses.
this feels like
forced emotion
coaxed into
singing
shoveled by a
golden spoon.
ii. epiphany
it is inevitable:
for a landscape
to be cracked up
close. for a wave of
overthinking to
arrive and refract
the given
meanings. she
will hold the
crystal
mouthpiece
in her hand
and declare a
truth: I like who
I am and who I
have become.
a wild product
of anthills
and oak trees,
sad songs in
the abdomen
and cola
afternoons. an
unknown
creature in the
blue-black night,
she averts the
judging gaze
and howls keenly
at the moon.
_____
cosmovisión
for leilah
the aja moment tugs my chest to the south bound to
a knowledge that we have built this is the cosmovisión of two
sisters an urge that rises from skittish premonition like the ache
of a specific album we both heard at once though miles apart
or the ache of overlapping lucid dreams staining the gold-brown
iris that we share this cosmovisión is a spiritual thing more
powerful than the offerings we used to make on sundays puncturing space such as the distance from la to san diego coasting on the amtrak surfliner with the smell of tangerine and ocean our black lashes bat at the aja moment and like divine intervention it cannot be explained a belief system belonging only to us as tongues translate spurts of words into wandering tales a merciless history we both know the punch line to how can I explain this linked condition only by saying that the feeling of your absence is the feeling of loss
the loss of something tender and true it is an honor to be disappointments together not quite as polished as the elders had planned I am grateful for the distance bridged by mutual lack of faith and
for this multilingual spirit that keeps our beings close
