POETRY
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Before Me
I sought to find my motherhood,
A journey long postponed.
But emptiness was where I stood,
A remnant here alone.
Silence trembled while air cracked
And trees pulled down to weep.
But on the ledge where clouds were tacked
I found a twilight sleep.
Ancestral streets caressed my feet
Which dragged along the floor.
But up she reached, gave me her seat
And held me long once more.
Hands glued in a spinning crowd
One by one it grows less loud.
Together in unison, they chant.
Memories of voices you can’t supplant.
Skipping, hopping, even walking
Adults sit in black, barely talking.
We have a lifetime to say goodbye
Yet still, the distance makes us cry.
“We all fall down,” says the verse
One by one we all disperse
The beginning of mourning, what we lost
Forgetting for a moment what it cost
Falling down in a giggling heap
The game starts over and up we leap
WE ALL FALL DOWN
Heritage
She smiles on wash day
Rubbing coconut oil between her fingers
Massaging my aching scalp.
Long brown fingers detangle
The knots
Tugging at my roots.
But I was uprooted
Lost in the tangles
Of unheaded hair
With no heritage.
I wonder what he has been thinking
After all of these years.
The man in the suit
With his back turned to me.
What was the chance that he’d find himself
Perched on the edge of that stool,
Captured
By the Nighthawk painter
Who was up a bit too late.
A plant in a box that can never grow.
Encased behind a glass edifice
Locked on the corner of that street.
Was he thinking of a life to which he’d never return?
The apologies he’d give to his wife,
The jokes he’d tell his friends,
The excuse he’d give his boss.
Never again would he see the sun
As it rose and fell
Over the lazy rolling
Peaks of the city skyline.
The night was his absolute
His fate was final
On the corner of that street,
Where cigars were only 5 cents apiece,
His life became a two-way mirror
And the only side he could see
Was his reflection in the salt shaker.
HOPPERS NIGHTHAWKS
CHRISTMAS MAGIC
As if by magic the world is transformed and doused in what we call
“The Christmas spirit”
Where does this magic come from?
Is it in the bright bulbs that decorate the trees?
Or is the secret concealed up the man in red’s sleeves?
Where it came from, or where it goes
The mystery that no one knows.
But they say
Its hidden away
In the glow of the child’s eyes who still believes
Cascading waterfall of light.
Fill my empty cup
So that I may drink. And warm
It is
that light that fills my soul.
There was a glow about that light
Brilliantly speckled about
With a smell of jasmine flowers.
And so I drank.
It tastes sweet, like honey
it oozes down, leaving
A tingle on my tongue.
The heat moves down my spine and I feel
The warmth raising goosebumps my on my arm.
Dazed and distracted, the cup falls
and shatters,
The sound tickling my ears, and I fall on glass.
With Jasmine Flowers lingering on my lips.
I the remember the light.
Dull and gray,
She spoke out of the left side of her mouth.
Spilling tea out of her right.
But she couldn’t speak
Because of the smoke in her lungs.
Thick was the fog
Plainly oozing of confusion,
Why would flower petals give paper cuts.
The forest walls will close
And the ground will swallow me whole.
Speaking, whispering “babe,
Ven encuentrame.”
The jealous syllables will play
At the edge of my ear.
Light pours and spills over the edge,
Too much for one cup to contain