YSLETA, TEXAS

                (in honor of barrios everywhere)

 

 

Cottonwood crosses

planted in sun-

cracked mud: Inca dove

bones among olla shards.

In this desert, trunks of fruit trees,

crosses without names and all

are washed white.  Gypsum.

Lime.  Here, dirt is life,

shaped into utensils

and adobes—here, dirt holds

seeds soaked with irrigated

water, hoping to blossom.

Here, when canal water drains

hungry children dig in bottom

sand for crawfish.  Dust storms

live in teeth, dreams and eyes. 

Loose cotton blows over

empty fields months after harvest

and the roosters crow all day.

Every moment is torment

and sunrise.

 

My mother's home

was a bowl made of clay.

I will perish into finding

all the pieces.

 

 

 

 

  

SOLSTICE

          the americas                         

 

 

War in sun country

Lights water with orphans.

       

Braids sawed off.  As if arms.

 

Pray for snow, and thistle

Blooms purple along

 

Roads.  Amaranth grows

Beyond the harvest.

 

                *     

 

Morning sky: more meadow

Than metal.  A clear-eyed orphan

 

With stars on her tongue,

 

Hiding her siblings

In the sun glow. 

 

A soldier knows a kiss

Won't open that mouth.

 

 

 

  

  

AFTER REVOLUTION

 

 

Sunlight on my eyes, the dead

among my feet.  The sacks

of beans, the pumpkins piled in the shed.      

                   Even the mice

 

speak of keeping in this time

of grief.  A ditch like a dried-up

lake.  Cobs bleaching, teeth.

                   And the shoveling.

 

Will I recognize you

—me—within the strata

of this new gathering?

                   In the streets,

 

fireworks kiss hello

a burning sky.  Sparks

find their way back

                   into silver.

 

I catch my reflection in an open-

air market.  The flaking skulls

of coconuts have two dulled eyes,

                   milk that may never flow.

Emmy Pérez holds an MFA from Columbia University and is a member of the Women Writers’ Collective in El Paso.  These poems originally appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Rio Grande Review, Dánta and her poetry collection SOLSTICE (Swan Scythe Press, 2003).