Migrant ghost heart | day eight poetry month

She is now just an idea,
a deep memory
an ancestor
a sister
a woman
a ghost heart
in my mind in my veins in my half life

Her body was her own utopia
she gave herself over to one man only
gave birth to sons
who married and had daughters and one son
who she then raised
because her sons became trapped in the delirium of their bodies
-- and nothing else.

Her body was overthrown
by an uprising of cells
brigades and divisions
armies invading overrunning her body
all organized by her beautiful blackened curly hair
the uprising occupied her adulthood
burned her body into all her sisterhoods
occupied her five senses
punctured her voice into silent curses
deep pain, nails under the eyeballs, skinned alive pain
The onslaught of cellular troops
forced her to retreat to childhood
where her father and mother
where her sisters and brothers
waited for her
they were the fortress walls
of tenderness
of sweets and toys
of being held in arms
of being breast-fed
of being rocked into cozy sleep under hand-made quilts and lullabies
where the warm breath of her mother's wisdom
pushed back the scrimmages, the ambushes and cleared the battlefields
so she could live another day to live...

She became all her sisters
Her skin an impeccable wave
her lips a crimson dance
Her bones turned into glass
She became the young woman again
Until she became the girl of her own utopia.

She would laugh at our jokes because it made her happy
She would cook all the meals and served coffee because she knew hunger
She attended to herself with the love she made
because she knew what being loved did for her
She offered herself without conditions...

This music
she hums and sits upright
even though her bones
have lacerated her flesh,
gnawing away her laughter
the shards of her bones
skinning her eyes with barbed-wired tears
Her body an incision of endless weight
splitting apart the atomic meditation
of the pain-killers
into particles of song
pushing her down into a bayonet of solitude
shattering the vertebrae of her embrace

She did not want to leave alone
She refused.
The invading armies shriveled
Our mourning became her ally
She would not leave alone.
So her father came for her
brought her a girly dress that she adored
And then she left with resolve and unfinished love...

[Poema 22] Resurrecciones

Antes de vivir una vez
he muerto tres vidas
La mujer que merece todas las vidas
ha perdido
las vidas que dio
ahora quiere resurrecciones
ahora quiero la vida de mis muertitas y muertitos
Quiero volar
resistir el terremoto de la gravedad
evadir las revelaciones fotográficas
hacer un discurso espacial en tus pequeñas manos.

Morí en 1964 cuando un pandillero disparó contra mi cabeza
estaba parado en frente a la ventana de la cocina
lavando trastes
caí de espalda
La segunda vez me hicieron prisionero de la guerra sagrada
y me auto-sacrifiqué enfrentando a los invasores en 1508
La tercera vez
fue en medio de una labor de frijol verde de primavera
mi corazón falleció de un ataque de cuerpo
muerta antes de que mi cabeza tocara el polvo de los zurcos.
Ahora mi cuerpo está siendo derrumbado
por una tristeza negrísima, oscura, sin estrellas, soles, y lucitas
Esta muerte se llevará acabo durante
una ataque por zángano militar de control remoto
O moriré de viuda y de madre
que ha perdido sus hijos a la guerra contra las drogas

Estoy resurectándome por cada poro de la tierra
Soy el levantamiento que emboscará a la éxtasis cristiana
El cielo se tiñirá de rojos, colorados, púrpuras, pieles cadaverales
Este no es el destino de la tierra
Este es el destino de la humanidad.

Y yo alegre aquí
de tu mano
de tus rezos
de tus sollozos
de tu roncura voz
que tropieza espíritus y alcahuetes
y mi ojos hipnotizados por el garabateo de tu cuerpo...

[Poema 20] Metamorphosis

Socorro says
time doesn't make sense anymore
She counts the weekdays on her fingers
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday,
mumbles
Thursday
Friday.
The name doesn't matter
every day is the same.
What matters is who is with you,
that's what the days should be called.
She laughs to herself.
The cancer
has transformed her
into a young, carefree woman
She giggles as the pain
occupies every cell of her body.
She is refusing her meals,
not hungry,
Then all day, she will sip on the Jarrito I brought her
Nibbles now and then on a chocolate cream pie
I show her the night-time photographs
of the take-off and landing of a trip to Mexico
after a few slides,
she asks are those electricity-breathing dragons?
I say yes and she laughs happy at the revelation
Then she covers her eyes
like the little girl she has become in illness
she is scared, she says.
The speed of the airplanes are making me dizzy.
So I stop the slide-show.
and we continue talking
about death,
how she is not afraid
how the night is the best time to live
how the nurses are hurting her feet
when she needs to be massaged with tenderness
The nurse walks in plops another meal on the counter
and Socorro ignores her and the food.
She starts again
I'm not afraid to die
I'm afraid to leave you behind
I don't want to go
until everyone is safe
until everyone is together again.
I will wait, too.
She stares out the window,
knows all the cars.
She sees Rafa drive up in his work truck,
tells me. Rafa's here!
She lays on her back
her hair thinned by the radiation
Einstein was right
one day all time will go in reverse
Today Coco is going back in time
she's becoming a frail baby girl
giggles at Rafa's silly jokes
she is curling up
her feet become slender boats
her hands becoming mesh bones with fronds of skin
She is waiting to be bathed
we ask over and over
after three hours of asking
she finally gets her bath
Then she puts on lipstick, blush
puts on a purple blouse,
wraps a burgundy colored silk scarf slacks
and lays there in bed
looking like an Elizabeth Taylor
waiting for a man, her man, to feed her grapes
and rub her feet.
Socorro has become butterfly and cocoon
she has been migrant caterpillar
Now she is becoming the beautiful woman again
She who disobeyed her mother
and ran away with the man she loved
Today she is disobeying everyone
she will not runaway
Now we are all running to her
the last matriarch of the six women
who created the people
who created the land
who created the wind
who created the waters
from their wombs
from her campesina hands
from her side
Socorro has become all six matriarchs
where we all now listen,
make music
tell story
We are going back.