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Candles
My mother never liked candles. Twice they were responsible for a childhood blaze. Now, like a candle, her life wanes. Her lips form soundless shapes on January 9th, “Happy Birthday.” She smiles bright and sleepily even when she’s held me to her swelling belly after I cried to “You are my sunshine,” on the…
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Room 10-24
There was a woman I didn’t recognize, the same color as the walls, stacked like a house of sticks frail enough to knock over with a touch, waiting for her daughter. And I, looking for my mother popped my head into each room desperately. In the room I passed this woman I didn’t recognize was…
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Scissors
When you cut me from your life, did you use scissors? Did you cut carefully like I was a curving, challenging, stencil? Occasionally I feel like a frayed ghost limb from a thoughtless tear. Maybe I was creased first before you casually pulled me …
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Maria and my Mother
They say you should never take your mother for granted. I discovered too late that this applies to mother nature, and my mother land from whom I can only sputter my mother tongue. I’ve only lived in Puerto Rico in two ways. In pictures, and my parents; from the bandera brandished mugs, plates and porcelain…
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Rotary Phones
I miss rotary phones. Did you dial gently like drawing a message in the sand, or like tearing knots through hair with hooked fingers? I miss tugging the wrong digit and how it forced us to start all over. Put effort. Be cautious when we drag. Think. I miss shuffling through a mental lattice of…
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Pirates
White men tryna kill my mother – my mamasita. Not with guns, not with knives, but with paper. It’s like they comin’ for us. They know I’ve wet my toes in middle class waters, coming from a pair of sneakers a year, hand me downs, and a brown box from the church, full…
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Time
How can we buy time, if time is money and we have so much of it that’s free? How can we have all the time in the world, if time waits for no one? It dulls words not bound by paper or laced in song. Subtly, with calculated clips. Lachesis snuffs out…
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The Past
It’s where you wander when you’re lost because it’s deep and familiar. The end is visible although not really an end, but where you started. It’s easy to try all the abandoned roads than to leave and instead go to the one place where the only road is forward. It’s easy to be lost in a…
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Seasonal Poems
Fall Trees The blond-ing rabble make a few flush ruddy enough to shed hay. Crowns burning like brand new copper pennies. Some with flaxen weeping heads, drumming fingers or knobby sockets. Spring Trees Spring is like a post-wedding afternoon. Branches brushed with bursting party poppers, swooning mops, dabbed and dotted with earlobes and cotton balls, below bellowing blossoms and star…
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Weather Poems
December’s confused. Trees like bulging veins, blighting silver skies. Clawing angrily for blankets on unsalted grounds, and toothless winds. Lace-less buildings and unglazed streets! Exposed knees, and clip-less teeth! Frost-less windows are causing distress! The season’s in limbo, and the trees undressed! The mist polishes us ’till we glisten. Until the roads mirror…
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Rachel's Floetry 