i.
here: our forsaken home
mesa breaks desert
dialing curve of mountain
...
When no one else would listen, Saint Anthony
preached seaward, his words fishnet for the lost
souls of the heretics. Caught up in despair, we plea
...
You're flush with hearts and I'm forced to fold
this hand and swear off another luckless match.
How we've found ways to love each other, cajoled
...
All morning my daughter pleading, outside
outside. By noon I kneel to button her
coat, tie the scarf to keep her hood in place.
...
The day upturned, flooded with sunlight, not
a single cloud. I squint into the glare,
cautious even then of bright emptiness.
...
When the forsaken city starts to burn,
after the men and children have fled,
stand still, silent as prey, and slowly turn
...
Deborah Paredez is the author of the poetry collection, This Side of Skin (2002) and the critical study, Selenidad: Selena, Latinos, and the Performance of Memory (2009). Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Callaloo, Crab Orchard Review, Mandorla, Palabra, Poet Lore and elsewhere. Her honors include an Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Foundation Award and residencies from the Vermont Studio Center and Hedgebrook. Paredez is the co-founder of CantoMundo, a national organization for Latina/o poets, and she is an associate professor of English at the University of Texas, Austin where she teaches in the New Writers School MFA program.)
A Cartography of Passions
i.
here: our forsaken home
mesa breaks desert
dialing curve of mountain
territory of anthropology
of the outlaw
where you taught me how to shoot that .22 real good
rifle butt steadied against the shoulder socket
a wild pulsing third arm
postures of stillness and reserve
practiced cunning of the predator
in the end shattered
bottles among cowering piñones
here: the natives have never been safe
ii.
curious sentimental boy intent
on the romance of expedition
clever cynical woman intent
on the Romantic trope
mi cielo mi mar mi luna mi tierra
language of Spanish occupation
diligent engineers
we divide and enter
mapping for future travels
the sheets marked, desk cluttered:
pencil shavings graphs incomplete stanzas
metaphors and equations
of isolated fixed points
like Malinches we are left
harboring the remains of one
another's labor
iii.
la migra your mind
skilled at expulsion
vigilant surveillance
those refused entry interest me
those forced to settle elsewhere
ours is a patrolled encounter
my mind is what interests you
creases of cerebrum electric
streams coursing through these fissures
a landscape ripe for excavation
you are brother to Isabella
in devices and commands
always the agenda
the missionary plans
and like the others
you will insist on exile
and I am no Circe
no magical powers
no victim of narrative
just a woman with these few words
a woman who has peered through the barrel of a loaded gun
leaving nothing intact