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Showing posts from April, 2014

The Parade

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Stained glass from Notre Dame Sundays dias de misa! Bright and flowery days everyone dressed in their best for all to see. My family, neighbors, strangers ready to praise the Lord! The folks who did the most went to Jericho Baptist Church. I was certain no one at my church, Our Lady of Victoryyyyy could compete. But the folks who walked down our streeeeet to get to First Samoan Full Gospel Church around the corner from my block also had flair.   While mom and my sisters finished getting ready for our service, “Holy Communion!” I’d sit on the front steps like a good girl, the thickness of my dress bunched up between my legs, my hair slicked back in a plain pony-tail and feet stuffed into my Mexican-leather shoes mom bought me at la tienda 3 Hermanos. My shoes felt tight, like my pony-tail, but around my toes. Sundays cramped my style, toes and temples throbbed, as I watched the contingent of worship

Mommy Issues

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Each time I see him he sizes me up, stands by me shoulder to shoulder turns and looks me in the eye “I’m taller than you,” he says with such delight.   Standing shoulder to shoulder, the way I’ll always stand by him, so proud of him and all that he’s becoming. I see him age and I think “Aw, he’s so grown. No longer a little boy.” Can’t fight the pangs of nostalgia as they make my eyes water, nostalgia for the times when his smallness fit in my arms. How I’d drape his little body on me after a long car ride that rocked him to sleep.   With his head over my left shoulder I’d climb the steps, 23 of them I believe, feeling him get heavier and heavier and tighter across my body with each step till we reached the top, breathing heavy, walking slowly towards the door. Carrying him like that reminded me of when I was a kid and mom would come home from the evening shift, around midnight, and pick my sisters and me up from the baby sitter’s. Our neighbors Patty and Lencho took care

Female Embrace

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Thank you Frida this image captured my words here they are, released to you.  Always feels like I’m the last one to get home on our block. Our street quiet as I limp like an ese my heavy work bag slung over my left shoulder loafers pinching my baby toes. My dogs are barkin’ from the long day. A few more steps, they will soon breath. A coyote sees me and gets scared it runs then freezes in its tracks. I don’t stop. I walk faster pretend I don’t care that he’s there, “you got your business and I got mine,” I step it up but baby toes don’t allow me to push it too much. The neighborhood dogs hear my hurried steps and fill the silence with barks. I pass the neighbor’s house the one that drives an exterminator van with the sticker that reads “que quieres pinche rata!” stuck on the back windows. I scared another one of the night’s inhabitants a mom and pup skunk duo. I scurry to the middle of the street where all the light

A Poem for a Poet

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R.I.P Tupac You've heard about that Rose, she slipped through the cracks in the cement? That Rose cracks me up, ignoring “the facts” and making her own destiny she didn’t take it, she pushed back pushed so hard with her heart, her lungs breathing life, with her dreams. Influencing Poppies and shit. Cause they do it too push their way through past the rough ages ignoring the rubbish and everything surrounding that’s not nurturing. That Rose that grew from concrete, who knew she’d mean so much to so many.

#TBT

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TB used to mean tuberculosis now it's a different social thing that's caught on. Trending our past is trending a coming out with our past sharing a time that was. This TB Thursday is about a place I went to vent and disconnect and realized how much life the world is filled with. Recognized other non-human lives that I'm affecting on a daily but not connecting to. Throw back, I'll go back and keep coming back to this space that heals me so. The sea is alive I feel it so, when it gets sick I we get sick...like TB you get it. I go there and carry my past with me this time my favorite hoodie reppin’ CPT and oh yes, a Bruins blue cap. And also carry my yesterday it's so much better not being angry I say this looking at the waves roiling  over one another. Can't let my feelings be in a drought Negative- can't be in the red. It feels so good letting go the way the waves reach desperately for the shore then let it g