Pressed Flower: A Poem

This poem is from a collection of writings that were part of my NaNoWriMo 2016 project — “East of a River: A Mestiza’s Mixtape”. They are reflections, stories, and other tales based on my experiences living between Los Angeles and Boston and being Mexican / Cuban / Puerto Rican. Many of the them reflect stories, feelings, things I’ve heard or seen . Much of the project worked towards capturing the spirit of being a wanderer and observer between multiple cultures… ni alli, ni alla…please enjoy :)

*Chamise is a native California plant known as “greasewood”’

Between the Dirty Water and San Gabriel River

Is the liminal space where

oppression meets survival

and depression echoes joy.

It is the “press” at the center

of the words that shush the soul shut

Shuttered and shuddering

In our words, grandmothers sigh “Susto”

where the whisper of my breath

takes flight

sometimes into a person’s arms

released on a narrow promise -

another scared spirit

giving more shade than was ever thrown

by gazes veiled in “mal de ojo”

The wandering of that breath

is lassoed back by bone speakers

telling me how to breathe

scratching their spirals into the dirt

rattled into journey with new numbings

held fast by serpentine dances

In the Dirty Water, echoes

of that paper-white narcissus

delicate — stubborn, and sweet-smelling

intentionally small and close to the ground

Growing in green spaces where it doesn’t quite fit

the damp rots the root.

Some elder I read in a book

pretended to know my medicine

smoke out and add “de-”

to every wheel that must break

Impressioned,

it must choose

the lush or the chaparral

My hand will pass the perfumes

behind the nape of my neck

using nag champa in place of copal

Some warrior will appreciate

that odd alchemy

center of

that flighty soul.

pressed between my insides

the landscape of a mesa

living within cactuses

dry to the outside

Ghost dancing in the waves

of a saguaro’s fibers

The waters of the soul are life

filtered through the aquifer of

a stone-child heart.

She who weaves in the wind

given different plans

Never finishing the tapestry

too occupied

gathering the threads of everyone else’s stories.

The work unraveled

Chamise will never be native here.

Not another delicate white thing

found in and amongst their gardens

well-watered and cared for

Optimally dry and away from trails

she makes difficult to walk through

She is incendiary

full and stalky

Greased lightning that sparks fires

in the bush where her life spreads

And self-combusts as fit

For the heat.

This is her medicine

a gift of destruction

demanding room

softening the hard edges

of the hills that think she has no power

even if for a time

they lay torched dark and humbled

Her roots -

A tree petrified into sanguine ochre shades

mottled and tender like a bruise

pressed by time and impressed by nothing

the ceremony isn’t gone

but it isn’t quite here.

Grandmother’s sighed “susto”

we screamed back “silence”

Circling around the ghosts of

empirically proven medicines

accepting the dried tack biscuits of

a city of pilgrims that forgot their songs.

Such flowers grow alone

haunting the edges, all lloronas

300 year old bricks stay silent

to stone pyramids never witnessed.