You're on the edge of a plateau overlooking a valley of hoodoos dusted with remnants of yesterday's snowfall. Predawn light is faint, cold; the air shivers in short gusts of wind. In a century, the platform your feet are on will not be there, eroded by air and water down the cliff face's arches like frames of a cathedral's stained glass windows.
Category: Poetry
rivers of colonizer blood
After “Exterminate All the Brutes” by Sven Lindqvist.
your vision framed by planks salvaged from a ransacked village wrinkles in your brain wagon wheel tracks across the plains your home warmed by the flames of broken treaties the tump-tump in your chest bullets entering temples your veins rivers of colonizer blood
You live your life like nothing happened.
After Gifts of the Crow, by John Marzluff and Tony Angell.
I cannot forget. Whenever I walk by a blue Camry, your voice replays in my head — each hoarse syllable. I see your face in every cedar branch, every streetlamp aura. I cannot forget. I’ve tried waiting years, traveling as far as I can from you — but the past always comes back like the tide on the shore. I cannot forget. I want to scream every well-practiced retort I’ve bottled up — but they all come out as one guttural shout. I cannot forget.
The last time you were drowning
The last time you were drowning, they came to see to you after school. You were washing mugs in your classroom sink. They watched you, said you were methodical — a word you associate with supervillains. Scars in your vision danced on the whiteboard behind their head when you talked about your week.
They start the meeting with a breathing exercise.
“Take a deep breath in,” their voice echoes from a speaker above your head, “and out.” When was the last time you were able to breathe deeply? Everyone else closes their eyes, breathes synchronized and slow. How do they do it so easily? Your shoulders are tight as piano wire. They say to inhale light, exhale negativity. What if doing that leaves nothing left? Your eyes dart around the room between each calm face — you are alone. Why can’t you be like them? Why did they invite you here in the first place?
A Time We Were
I’ve typed half an email to you a dozen times, desperate as a maple reaching over a scenic byway. Do you remember when we used to communicate through the wind? I could hear your voice, your thoughts, just by how you exhaled through your nose during one of Mr. Slater’s lectures. We could be states apart, but I would still know; thoughts were leaves on autumnal breezes falling on the mossy forest floor. Heavy currents eroded our bridge, felled trees snapped our power lines, space debris brought down our satellites, and now you’re just ones and zeros — a silent amalgamation of pixels.
A Tsunami Advisory
She asks if you’re awake. Your eyes struggle open. Her silhouette blurry in your tent’s doorway against the morning’s overcast sky. Your throat attempts a word. She tells you not to panic — a volcano erupted across the ocean; the National Weather Service said there’s a chance for a tsunami along the coast where you’re camping. “Not a warning, an advisory.” You nod your head, eyes closing. She zips the tent flap closed as she leaves. Brisk air bites your face, which peeks out of your cocoon. You see waves tower over the shore, lift your tent, rip its stakes out of the ground. You wonder whether you and your sleeping bag would float along the surf to the cranberry fields down the road. You wonder whether that would be the worst outcome. You see your classroom; your students; a painted rock gifted by one, defaced with a slur by another, left under your desk. You feel failure, consider the possibility they would be better off with another teacher. You remind yourself: your brain does this all the time, there is evidence to the contrary. You can’t see any.
We went to see my grandfather
A stop before a three-hour drive home. A subject I, at fourteen, avoided. A hospital. I walked in last, stared at the tiles on the floor until I was nudged to say hello. When I looked up, I saw him. A gown. Wires. Tubes. Shadows from an overhead light. My mind saw him die and I cried. No words. He frowned — scowled, maybe. “Get out of here with that!” he yelled. I remember him raising his arm up to shoo me away. My mom gave me the keys to her Expedition. I sat there trying to find air. When she joined me, she asked, “Why were you crying?” My thoughts intercepted by arguments and counterarguments shouted across a crowded conference hall. Reverberating echoes off a tall ceiling. No words. I leaned my head on the window away from her, watched the world blur.
a tether loosening
i fade in and out of the present like a maple branch’s shadow on concrete like the stars in a city’s sky like a siren’s doppler effect like the public’s interest in climate change i fade in and out of the world like a radio’s static on the highway like a cell phone’s reception on the coast like the tide of a rising sea like a retina scar against clear blue sky your lips keep moving, but words don’t make it ashore
a windshield, frozen over
sometimes, you feel like a passenger in a car. in motion, but cannot see out of the windshield— the fog too thick. sometimes, you try to protect yourself, give yourself a shield. it is thick, cold; it buries you.
M. Espinosa 