Massiel’s Blog
Just another WordPress.com weblogGirl in Mexico
There’s a girl in Mexico
I’ve never met
Who wears my clothes
And I’m told cries with joy
Each time the old man
From her church
Drives up her dirt road
And delivers paper bags
Filled with clothes
From across the boarder
We are the same
Blouse and shoe size
Same pant size, too
Nights I imagine her face
Made up from a million
Different shades that
Alternate between people
I’ve seen in passing
She’s a Sudanese woman
Wrapped in a cotton Shuka
And the woman from
Manhattan who wears red
Jeans and pink lipstick
She’s a Taiwanese girl
Who pulls her hair into two
Symmetrical pigtails that balance
On the crown of her head
Her body a map of the world
Up and down and around again
There are traces of her
Everywhere I’ve been
And everywhere I’ll never be
My tan shoes are
Strapped to her feet
The navy blue dress
I wore to my cousin’s graduation
Wraps around her like a second skin
It’s skirt waving like a flag
Announcing her presence
In a place that knows no boundaries
It is here where I discover
The cobblestone streets from her home
Are the same that make up the roads in India
And that the trees from her village
Are the same that grow in Madagascar
Then there is the wind
That collects and intermixes
All our breaths
Until we become one giant
Organism breathing as one
Without any of us ever realizing it
This poem is forthcoming in Two Hawks Quarterly
Wedding Poem for K and O
Like the moon
who begins as a silver
sliver in the sky
and grows with time
to a full figure
illuminating the world
with its light
And like the seasons,
who bring with them
A beauty unique to each
inside their cycles of life
So too is your love
That we have come to know
A love we watched bloom
from the roots you grew
when two souls became one
And as sure as we are
that the moon will continue
to pull the tide
And the seasons will continue
to signal the beginning
of something new
We too are sure
that a love like this one
cannot be undone
Baptism
What if I had gone with you,
walked across a carpet of leaves and grass
to reach the ruins in Peru
Would I be any closer
to understanding the universe?
Years ago I stayed out long enough to see
hundreds of crickets emerge from their burrows
to serenade nocturnal water lilies
From the shore the lilies looked like colored jewels
strewn over the water’s surface
So engaged was I by their grace
that I waded across the pond to be closer to them
when they bloomed in honor of the moon
I spoke there at length about the things that weighed
heavy over my head,
The tips of my fingers flicking water droplets
into the lilies lips to coax them open
I do not know how long I waited,
but the moment they revealed their yellow cores
I felt as though they had spoken to me
Their voices subtle, soft, serene
My body baptized in peace
This poem first appeared in Volume 16 of Border Senses
Morning Hike in Palm Springs
The morning opens with
a plane that sounds like thunder
warning the valley of what is to come
What exists and what does not blur
with the passing clouds
I think back to December
when the palm trees danced in the wind
and spoke like a rolling tide
I thought it strange then
to be able to hear the sea
deep inside the desert
But I suppose we train the ear
to hear what we’d like
Early Years
Our bicycles on a dirt road
Weaving between trees
Trying to beat the sun home
You laughing
Hard like the letter K
Pause to cross
string fingers
Hope your big brother doesn’t know
his baseball cards are
in our spokes
Mosquito bit legs
Pump in unison
My blue jacket flapping in the wind
This poem first appeared in The Whistling Fire
Peaches
I imagine even peaches
Have bad days
Their fuzzy bodies plucked
Before their prime
And left to rot on a kitchen tray
Their pudgy meat
Soft to the touch
Tattoo of my finger
Checking for a pulse
Nothing
Tia Marisol spends her days
At the stove stirring
Chicken broth into a copper pot
A flowered apron hugs her waist
There is no more talk about
A lover coming to take her north
These days she keeps to herself
A seed inside a green peach shell
Hard, bitter and tart
This poem first appeared on anderbo.com
