Tag: transformation
-
Transcription
soundtrack and images transform into words. I wanted to capture how memory and imagination build a foundation—bright doors, roofs wide as sky—out of fragments of fear and joy. The theme is resilience: the act of immersing nightmares in dreams until something sacred emerges.
-
Finalities
Finalities emerged from a moment of ritual clarity after my mother’s passing. I wanted to honor not just her memory, but the gestures others made to restore her—clipping her hair, dressing her in youth, renaming her Elsi. It stages mourning as a quiet choreography of speculative grace. It’s about the transformation of a woman into…
-
Wrinkle-less
Wrinkle-less emerged from a moment of reflection on how survival—through illness, loss, and aging—leaves marks that are not always visible. I wanted to resist the cultural shorthand that equates wrinkles with wisdom, virtue or experience, and instead offer a poem where absence becomes a site of consequence. The scars, deafness, and neuropathy I reference are…
-
The Patterns of Water
The Patterns of Water” emerged from a memory that felt both sacred and procedural—a maternal baptism not of faith, but of consequence. I wanted to honor the ritual of care without sentimentality, to trace the gesture of cleansing as a symbolic tether between vulnerability and becoming. The poem is built on repetition, foam, and the…
-
Arguing with the Dead
Arguing With the DeadBegin by calling her by name,not the one etched on the granite monument in front of you,not the one printed on the birth certificate—that temporary name another motherwas forced to dream upin the haze of post-labor fade,in the ecstasy of seeing youfor the first time—something that grew for nine monthsinside this other,and…
-
Where She Left It
Where She Left ItOn the side of the highway, abandoned where the wild grass ends, a child’s shoe— blue, with a slight heel, broken on the left side, rhinestone anklet torn from its support— the victim of a wobbly learning step, its twin nowhere near.I circled it in reverence, looking for some sort of forensic…
-
I Should Have Followed You
I Should Have Followed You “Can I still call you Dorothea?”—even though the black and white lines in the paper reduce you to the habit you wore, arrange you into silence, a name and surname surrendered to the cloistering of lilies. Somewhere beyond this obituary, the grown children you once taught trace grief into their…
-
Between the Waves
Between the Waves There was never a single border, only the shifting tide of language, guavas glowing in the heat, the churn of Spanglish rolling in before the tide could pull it back. At the checkout line, the cashier asks, “Paper or plastic?”—so simple, so sharp. I glance at Mamá, but her words stick, caught…
-
The Nacre of Survival
**The Nacre of Survival** After all the operations, after the slow unraveling, I trace the shimmer left behind, a pearl forming in the absence of what was— the weight of my steps lighter, not in grace, but in uncertainty mixed with hope. I do not run anymore Yet, I watch Tom Cruise sprint, sprint— limbs…
-
The Widening Sky
**The Widening Sky** I feel myself shrinking, walking the night beach under the ever-widening sky. The sand clings to my feet, then is washed away in the tide’s haste to kiss the shore, only to recoil when it tastes the grit of life— the ancient attraction-repulsion born the moment the first creature rose from the…
-
Ode to an Empty Lot
The empty lot of the abandoned car dealershipis overrun with dandelions, thistles, and sticker weeds. On the right is a Baptist church standing sternly against the invasive plants. The ministry’s gardener sprays Roundup on the weaker creepers while his assistant uses a torch on the deeply rooted ones. On the left is a BBQ specializing…
-
Rogue Brother
My brother is an angler devoted to the stream that pools around long boots, making the slow cast that gently whips and ripples the surface with a reel that knows the proper weight of the scales below.Gone are the days when he fished Crandon Pier while sitting on an overturned paint bucket with a cheap…
-
Evening Traffic
In my late hunger I listen to the swirl of night traffic, until it dies around the curb— recedes into remembrance,to that melting space inside— the sound matching the tempo of my lowest need,getting lost in the evening’s reflection—ice memories melting to water,everything moving to my traffic flow—to the single track of my inside voice.
-
Light
When I was a child light shone angels through my fingerscrowning my parents’ faces,blessing the simple tasks of theirs: table setting, pouring water—how it lit the world in my upturned smileand flowed through as I grewand how it followed me homeand stayed, even in the dark.Light was the water, earth,reflecting off every animal, every street,…