Ballad of the Checkerboard A white man wearing judges’ robes was standing in the midst of all that brown, next to some rabble rousers, all incensed. These firebrands came to speak up for the brown Garcia family, although they did not know the murdered man. These instigators were the only other whites, as far as I could tell, although I thought they were a bit inane, these open carry types. They caused a real ruckus. These fatuous fools started chanting while another white man dressed in uniform standing upright, by the podium, told them to please consider shutting up. The browns looked on, shamed-faced. But the poor white trash bellowed they would never quiet down. Never give their floor to freedom without guns. The white man judged again, told them to suppress their thoughts or go away, yet seeming to confuse his words, he roared: go back to your own country, where it is that you belong. Was he speaking to the browns or to the whites? . Lucky it was City Hall I guess, and folks were calmer overall than any other place where riots take a turn… The whites resumed to yell and scream: but we are white, we are supreme, we do belong here: what of you? The browns looked onward, shunning the clashing clique, lamenting no one came to mourn their son their brother their lover friend. This refuse only came to make a point of their big guns, using poor folks’ murders to lay some blame. But still, they could not take away the grief unfolding of that sorrowful brown hued girl, her four young children grasping at her skirts, crying for their own lost daddy, their loved and lost best friend. Oh my.
Fishing in the Green Two bleached blond heads standing by the midst of green-manicured lawns gently sloping the golf balls peeking near a hole-in-one. Erect and standing tall, boy and girl look over the vast verdant sea searching for blue, a blue dot in that endless jade where they can dip their poles into: long, thin, expert poles with string ready at the bite to get that fish… but in the green? Close by the boy’s shiny steel-blue truck pridefully shining in the sun stands still, holding all that fishing gear, the buckets to keep the fish once they’ve bitten their bait, the bait to tantalize the fish… but wait: in the green? Innocence spreads the smiles of boy and girl as they search high and low for a spot of blue wishing to find in that glorious green, that shining viridian splendor, that artificial semblance of nature. Yet near the gleaming azure pickup bulging with its equipment gifted by mommy and daddy to that blond boy and girl who innocently search for that spot of blue within the chartreuse expanse, there is another truck, beat up, rusted, brown or red or dirty conch with equipment falling out its sides: vacuum cleaners, tires, metal boxes to fix every handyman’s troubles. The brown-headed couple divide and conquer. The olive-skinned female shoulders the vacuum, her long shining braid glistening in the sun. She trudges up the grand entryway of an imposing mansion next to the green. The swarthy, bronzed fellow departs, leaving his partner at the door of this dynasty, her vacuum cleaner upright as he heads to the golf course to begin his work in the rising heat. Weary even before the start of day the woman rings the doorbell, ready for labor. Next to the manicured golf club, Next to the rolling hills brandished in turquoise, next to the hole-in-one, she smiles sadly at the white woman opening the door to let her in. Already inside the clipped and pared golf club, looking beyond the gentle slopes wielding in sage next to the hole-in-one, the man scoffs bleakly at the teal expanse his lawn mower must travel today. All the while the two bleached blond heads beam at each other, at the splendor of a beautiful day, at the unnatural beauty of their gargantuan golf dream, at the perfect presents their mommy and daddy bequeathed them, today – their erect and shiny fishing poles – a bit misfit in that sea of green.
Friends Friends, whimsy of time slipping by not grasping its fading flight. Cafecito sipped slowly while we chatter, laughing at the girl & boy in that telenovela we missed during yesterday’s 30-minute session while we gossiped endlessly… Can’t recall the soap opera’s name yet I remember the delicious secrets we discussed while watching all that nonsense: our children’s angst and joys, our woes at getting so much work done against the grain— orals taken, PhD drafts finalized, recommendation letters always pending. We thought we were indestructible, you and I, our friendship would outlast it all— absent husbands and Disney World and whining kids, swimming pools and sandy beaches with doctoral theses and comprehensives sinking our deliberations… I see a passing Facebook reference to one exquisite child, a woman now: I cannot distinguish one daughter from the other. Do you have the same trouble with mine? Was I that good a friend if I cannot recognize your children all grown up? One husband divorced, school completed, job evaporated, country ousted. New life underway: me not in it. Life goes on. You went to another post. I left too. Who were we to say that life would hold us close? Or did all those grad school years belie my dream of friendship? I got your Christmas card today wishing me a Merry Merry. Picture perfect card with all the trimmings of a life fulfilled: grandchildren now, striking family, stunning home by a lovely lake. New husband, not the one you fancied in our youthful innocence. But our dreams, our ideals? Long ago we were the best of friends; yet now? When I drink my cafecito I often think of you, and that telenovela we never finished.
Matrimony Meandering annals traipsing rings in measures of nonsensical yesterdays at last, we realize too late the passage of time: thirty-seven years of happiness and pain and love within existence rambling through the years fumbling along, acquiring experience including our bounty, our existential plight, our joy in being, mooning over our love our children our pain our physical angst only to realize, laughingly, what we knew the minute we met, that nothing can replace our love – not money, not physical goods, not ethereal wants – you are the only one for me, as I am for you: always in resilience … © Everyday Celebration 2021
The Three Fates It’s strange this feeling of emptiness Nothing going nothing doing Life goes back and forth. Desires like the heavy clock tick forward, backward tolling into circumstance. The wanderer does not hear the wife’s lament But he cries into the night That she is right: And so it goes. And so I'm done. Life is a … Sita singing blues? The frost born sea Scrapes naked shoulders bare. Yet I howl the full moon barren in my unprotected sin and pray the ice melts storms of wickedness to liberate my lips so I can shear my trespassed dreams, Embroidering infinity thrice over, one tick forward, one tick back, one tick... The socks slide down the knees get scraped. The elbow grease gets waxed. Oh the teaching makes no sense When nothing gains in knowledge When no one knows what happens When not one soul can fathom love. And so I sit alone tick-tocking socks And stitching bookends like the three fates making time. An interpretation, not a translation (because translation is never poetry)
Los tres destinos Es extraño este sentimiento del vacío. Nada camina, nada se hace: la vida va y viene. Deseos como el pesado reloj avanzan, hacia delante, hacia detrás doblando a las circunstancias. El vagabundo no escucha el lamento de su esposa. Pero le llora a la noche que tiene ella la razón: y así continúa todo. Y así termina todo. La vida es una … Sita cantando “blues”? El mar parido de los hielos raspa hombros descarnados. Sin embargo, aúllo a la estéril luna llena en mi pecado descubierto y rezo que el hielo derrote las tormentas de maldad y libere a mis labios secos para esquivar mis traspasados sueños, bordando el infinito tres más veces, una marca hacia adelante, una marca hacia detrás, una marca... Los calcetines se deslizan hacia abajo, me raspo las rodillas. El que nunca llora, nunca mama. Pero no hay sentido en la enseñanza cuando nada gana recompensa, cuando nadie sabe lo que pasa, cuando ninguna alma puede comprender amor. Y así me siento sola haciendo tictac de los calcetines Y punteando sujetalibros como tres destinos tejiendo infinitud.
Being an academic not paid enough for my trouble, I wanted instead to do something that mattered: work with asylum seekers. I advocate for marginalized refugee families from Mexico and Central America. Working with asylum seekers is heart wrenching, yet satisfying. It is also quite humbling. My labor has eased my own sense of displacement, being a child refugee, always trying to find home.
In parallel, poetry is my escape: I have published in The Raving Press, Indolent Books, the Laurel Review, Shenandoah, and many other anthologies and journals, both in the US and internationally, online and in-print. My poetry in translation with its accompanying photography has been featured in art fairs and galleries as well. Peregrina, only in Spanish, was just published by Ediciones Valparaiso this June 2022.
I hope you like my art; it is a catharsis from the cruelty yet ecstasy of my work. Through it, I keep tilting at windmills.