Diana Lizette Rodriguez
para mi bisabuela,
Ricarda Torres Borjas
Ruinas Ruinas Ruinas Ruinas Ruinas
Ruinas Ruinas Ruinas Ruinas Ruinas
Ruinas Ruinas Ruinas Ruinas Ruinas
Ruinas Ruinas Ruinas Ruinas Ruinas
Ruinas Ruinas Ruinas Ruinas Ruinas
Ruinas Ruinas Ruinas Ruinas Ruinas
Ruinas Ruinas Ruinas Ruinas Ruinas
Ruinas Ruinas Ruinas Ruinas Ruinas
Ruina: Ruina: Ruina: Ruina: Ruina:::
Ruin:: Ruin:: Ruin:: Ruin:: Ruin:: Ru
Ruin:: Rui::: Rui::: Rui::: Rui::: Rui:::
Rui::: Rui::: Rui::: Rui::: Rui::: Rui:::
Ru:::: Ru:::: Ru:::: Ru:::: Ru:::: Ru::::
Ru:::: Ru:::: R::::: R:::::: R:::::: R::::::
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I.
:: :
A seasonal exposing of white hydrangeas
and their cousins the blue hydrangeas
whisper through the sun
I tend to remember the most
vulnerable parts of the years
like the memories of my tia
who did not know how to handle grief
and whose soul
turned inside and out
Whose mind found itself
between a schizophrenia September
while her eight children watched her
hold hands with delusion
and grief
II.
Planted
tight fields
roots intersecting without rhythm
My mother’s grief
:: found its way
to run into trees of phobias
Lingering torments
adjust themselves at an early age
and my mother was young
when the exaggerated
spaces were depleted from healing:::
evoking distance
the narrow pathways of silence
:::: :::
I will never know how it feels to grieve the death of your abuser
or understand how the body stays together:: :: ::: ::
VV.
Childhood marks and memories
slow figures becoming fiction
or fictions becoming truth
inventing and contradictory cycles
It has been fifteen years since my father's death truth
and along the route
an extension measuring between point a and point b
between the last time I heard his voice
to the moment I hear my last sound.
VVI.
Autumn,
you are occurring without warning
dividing wet grounds where
tall alpines crown
those blue spruces
exceeding diameters
I can not find myself to ask these trees
where, where does all of this go?
Leaves of a vigorous branch
sway truth
XX.
Spilled
we have been given prologues
with nothing to follow them truth
realizations of
our nation's failure
Touch soil of dissolution
smell the dark rich wet
ashes rising from the failure
of the West
This year we expect the truth like we are expecting winter. :
:: ::: ::: ::
Time, :: :
You place my bones on the street. On a one way street where every crushing moment is questioned.
Silence does the same thing as a red light. Destiny falters on everyone. Time, here you are holding
my hands against my warm face flesh. Asking me to feel my skull. My Yosemite built skull. White ceramic cheekbones not reflecting the color of my skin.
the places my eyes take
now trail and only witness transparency.
My Yosemite built skull
A case of wilting flowers
drying molding water.
My Yosemite built skull
A garden that un justifies the season
tamed by autumn's light,
our breaths inside our kidneys.
: ::
:: : Time,
Your skeletal frame has become a ruin
a radius and crystal oracle
And you remind me that my dreams have consequences
leaning down a homegrown language
a sleeping meant for numbness
We are here mistaking these words for fear
weakness moving bones
How do you direct the world to become so rushed?
A disappearance of my existence
inhale diameters advocating pauses
in these moments there is no taxidermy.
VII.
Las memorias de mi bisabuelo
están entre mi frente
entre mis ojos
con cada pensamiento el regresa
Su piel morena y seca
su pelo liso blanco
su baston cafe marmol
sus negros pantolones de cintura
y sus camisetas blancas
Las memorias de él se han callado
despacio y con tiempo sus momentos
arrastrados sin color ::
Pedro, mi bisabuelo con el nombre masculino
elástico símbolo
de cada hogar
¿Existias en pasado, o en el futuro?
Creencias del mundo fabricado
el sueño de los Estados Unidos
en el rincon
los sueños del inmigrante
arraigado devorando
cada momento
¿pero como es la libertad
cuando hay unos que todavía viven
los momentos en opresión? :: : : ::
IX.
Three nights ago
a teal green truck with black tinted windows
was left on the side of the road
On Wetmore going towards Stahl road
the truck was still
but resembled something
that wanted to continue
The city’s lights reflected
on it’s silver door handles
as we drove by
Someone had left it,
or maybe several people had left it behind
the truck has become a corpse
:::: Time,
You do not smell like thyme. You smell like rosemary from my grandmother's garden. It is strong and
growing with each thunderstorm.
When I was younger, my grandmother used IT to cure that disease in our family.
Boiled it. Scraped it. Tied it to my grandfather's throat. And his disease died, and parts of him died too.
::::::: ::::::::::::: :::::::: ::::::::: :::::: ::: ::
But, I believe in reincarnation. And I fear resurrection.
:: :
X.
Tia passed away
three years ago
I found out about her death
through the mumbling phone
Tia would sit on the blue couch
of my grandparents home
stare at the linear floor
without losing her
dissecting attention
reduced reaction
mourning variations
her presence in this world limitless
a tightness
of myth and truth
her fragmented words
coming out of her dehydrated voice
My family says
her grief never turned anything
and I have spent time trying to turn my grief into.
: ::
XIII.
I was given the paranormal when I was younger
inside an Easter gift basket
My grandfather said that it lived among
edges of San Luis and followed the immigrants to Rio Grande
It keeps itself as different forms of life with a respiratory system
ingesting and hovering air
Sometimes it says hello and sits next to you. It enjoys company, but it thrives inside solitude
Waking to a highlighted linger it invites itself inside our home
but, sometimes it only knocks on the dining room window
Like a tree branch that is being pushed by the wind
it knocks every few seconds or so, expecting you to give it attention
It does not knock for you to open the window
it only knocks for you to be reminded of its existence
:::
and this is the only way it stays alive.
XXI.
El tiempo se ha convierto en
esa época del año
donde todo está cubierto
por reluciente fabricación
los árboles han perdido sus hojas y aún
así encuentran algo a aferrarse
Yo disfruto de las caminatas de la noche
inhalación encuentra mi cuerpo y
pulmones se llenan de aire frío
sin tradicion
mis cavidades solas con segundos
y Diciembre con iluminación
Anoche, cuando caminaba a casa
sentí una gota de lluvia
lenta por mi mejilla
Pensé en la nieve
en las tierras en que
han viajado para colocarse
en estas estribaciones
Y pense en como
duelo se ha convertido
en la base de mí
cómo duelo me espera
en escalones de mi hogar.
Time,
You display yourself on my chest. To stop the movement of my breath. To stop my heart. My heart counts it's beats every 60 seconds are indefinite. This progress of existence remains and the events from the past
present and future are regarded as whole. You make these moments into one. A long strain, or a heavy crumble of miscellaneous. This morning nothing was whole.
I separated disconnected
misplaced from my
body head floats
body leaves
The world becomes everything I have wanted. Hollow. To live in an empty world is easy, but sometimes when emptiness keeps filling my cup I notice the unmeasured hours between midnight and noon.
XI.
Pedro sufrio por dos semanas
antes de morir
su cuerpo
derrumbó
hacia tierra ajena
débil
sus últimas palabras
amargas sin poder
Pedro murió en la mañana
o alamejor durante la noche
las memorias
de él se han perdiendo
dispersados entre camposantos
::: :: :: :: :
cada vez perdiendo sol.
XXX.
How can she recall something that someone else has stored?
I do not know how to
separate then there
memories of my father
the refusal of life
a memory of bisabuelo Pedro
rolling a cigarette
a cup of instant coffee with sugar and milk
the creating silence
grasping the ends
a relapse focusing
itself
reflection of his age
in the mirror and a flicker
there then
a wheel in memory
that does not turn
broken
clumsy
melting
a relapse focusing
itself
an aiding kingdom for space
exile constant for birth
an image of my grandparents
living room with
a catholic sun hanging from the ceiling
weak light unattainable to hold
the gold near La Virgen
and the single spot of metamorphosis
mi abuela rezando entre
the restless fabric of :::: :
XVII.
Small rounded scales
inhale cinnamon colored
red
Blessed by Father Will
the painting of La Virgen de Guadalupe
Clouds displayed as roses
it hangs in the living room
and my grandmother prays
below it
::
Clips of her garden
inside a vase
My grandmother has known La Virgen
since she was a little girl
Within dense waters ::
her at eleven years old
on the shoulders of man
crossing el rio
La Virgen reached
my grandmother's hand
preventing her
from drowning
Juan Diego’s vision
lead to her appearance
a bright morning
replicated in our home
I stare at
La Virgen’s figure
with gold lining
her eyes soft
with memories
and I realize she has also known me
since I was a little girl.
::: :: :: :::
MMV.
Papa sits near the kitchen table
the kitchen is not
as I remember
walls are pale
yellow
and sustain
in shadows
electrical wires hang
the ceiling open
reveals tendencies
of sky
from the wide
windows behind him
trails of light
becoming blue
easily find his skin
Papa in the kitchen
has been dead
for fifthteen years now.
Time,
You are holding my hands against my warm face flesh. Asking me to feel my skull. To think of my skull outside my head. Floating and without this guided identity. You tell me of the limited space of these ways. My skull floats in a dark room. A room in which any footstep would echo. Hovering calligraphy. A cultivation of hyperactivity- and nothing.
These walls do not hold forces. Do not hold truth. And you tell me: this is how it ends with a series of horizons.
:: ::
MM.
This morning
my mother sent me a prayer
in which later I found clarity:
May I live this day
Compassionate of heart
Clear in word
Gracious in awareness
Courageous in thought
Generous in love
: : ::
I.
A running surface skimming eleven years
clear in words
sea waves capped with foam and shame
alluding bounds entering eternity
when do these seas turn
into creeks of Mexico?
holding hands
a given yellow light
during a fruit cut afternoon
thick pieces of papaya
on a plastic plate
abuela Alicia has cut even though she knows I don’t like papaya
::
abuela Alicia has placed
a white carved statue dedicated
to the sacred land
dedicated to my father ::
holding
pausing
a statue of the saint for the hopeless and despaired
pienso en papa
and what he must think of about this statue
y pienso que papá se fue sin esperanza y desperado
abuela alicia lives without the truth or lives ignoring it
entering eternity
when do these pieces of papaya
floating down the creeks
of Mexico reach
the seas?
:: ::: ::
XLIV.
Mi abuela me enseñó a
rezar
apretando
los años
torcida la puerta roja
yo esfuerzo entre
pedazos mochados
de existencia
un archivo sin
anticipacion
la cosas dadas a Dios
a traer
entusiasmo
el olvido
ilustrado
el invierno
no trajo flores
se extendió a otras
horizontes
y Dios dormio
todo este invierno
IVN.
I do not remember the street name or choose not to remember
Sometimes they are these impulses
blue moon stone impulses
telling
body
to recall to go back to those front steps of the house
breathe
knock on door
and ask to revisit the backyard I do not want to see the inside of the home
the backyard
a beginning of my childhood
buried
underneath green elastic grass
two stone walls
the backyard formulating
trilogy of ruins.
Time,
have you made me abandon my soul? My therapist told me this morning that sometimes our minds leave our souls behind. When minds run faster than body and the inclination for abandonment becomes truth.
I told him:
Sometimes when I am walking I have an impulse to just start running. Run as if I am chasing something.
And I ask my body why, why do you want to start running?
Impulse grows
overwhelms amount of thought
I realize that you can ask a body how and what
But can never ask the body why.
:::::::: Time,
I am constantly following my own ghosts into fields of dandelions. Unopened surfaces. Portraying
stillness.
A yearbook of ecstasy smearing your distance.
CCX.
When I go to San Antonio I tend to drive near the exit Hildebrand and 410
the house sits on a yard and I wonder if there will never be a hurricane strong enough to remove it
Bisabuela Ricard lives on the exit of I-35 and Division road
south side of San Antonio
houses crumble cement melts
the latino communities I grew up watching
Bidabuela Ricarda lives in a small three bedroom home without central conditioning
early spring weekends hit 98 degrees
XLIV.
Ricarda Torres Borjas nació en San Juan de los Cerritos, San Luis Potosi
no se mucho del amor que tuvo con mi bisabuelo Pedro
no se como se conocieron
no se como crecieron juntos
Cuando Pedro fallecio se llevó partes de Ricarda
hay veces donde Ricarda se acuerda de una historia
la comienza con tanto detalle pero despues para y dice:
“Ya no me puedo acordar”
y no termina la historia
Cuantas de sus memorias se ha llevado? Y cómo podemos tener de regreso esas memorias que se han llevado los muertos?
CDXVI.
I wonder if this lack of childhood memory occurs because my father has
taken parts of it to his white ceramic grave.
Time,
How do I make enough of you? How do I wrap
myself around with your paradoxical intentions?
At 3 am you wake me
tell me to follow the mind
what mind do you speak of? is the mind that remembers
childhood smells? or is the one that remembers familiar
tastes that lead me nowhere and yet to my father's door
yellow dust on silver door handles
uranium on the welcome home mat
My inflamed photographic memory had once decided it wanted permanence
forcing linear light to split
trailing a radioactive silence.
MCXL.
Molding releasing towers
an existence that never wanted to exist
I think of all the minds who decide that they can not go any further than this
complete darkness leads to one path
mistakes of a single reality or reality of
My father ended his own life because of this
this this was too much
and yet how does a dark mind end when it is given to its offspring?
::
Sometimes when I am staring at the floor or sky
I feel it I feel my mind complete and whole
rambling words pushing along the ridges
blue words repeated sentences
When this feeling is too strong I ask out loud:
¿Papa, haci era tu mente?
:
LXXVII.
Cuando mi familia Borjas cruzó la frontera
trabajaron en las tierras de un cementerio Chapel Hill Cemetery en Converse, Texas
estas eran las tierras
expansivas que mi hermano, tía y yo
corrimos y rodamos por colinas
Mi bisabuela Hortencia
tío silvestre y bisabuelo Pedro
están enterrados allí
recuerdos de vida y historias se quedan conmigo
Como esta historia que ocurre
mi madre y sus primos jugando y corriendo
entre los muertos
jugando con una niña y niño
que cuando los persiguen
se desaparecen entre
el grueso tronco de árbol
aparentemente se desvanece
a algo más allá de nuestra existencia.
LXXXVIII.
We visit Chappell Hill once a month to leave flowers for Pedro and the other family members
White distilled daisies
he is buried next to my tio Silvestre
and my abuelita Horcentencia is only buried a few meters away
my family has bought more land around these graves.
LXV.
::
I will never understand how the body stays together when all of its memories have mistaken violence for love?
::
::
:: :
Time, : :: : : :
Another person has become you
a low sky holds you directly in shadows
war promotes you to become more violent more isolated
A red and green triangle
abstractions of your magnitude
you have said over and over again:
this should not become you
this history that is more extinct than the ones on paper.
::
Time,
Why do concentration camps still exist?
Time,
Why are borders filled with blood?
why do you hold your breath when
you think of your destruction?
dark mix media
behind and beyond
a belief of hydration
beauty composed to endure small islands
mornings with absent minds
grass grows like reaching limbs
across bridges miles of fires a thousand shifts attracting fortunes
why are children being taken away from their families? inserted into places of punishment
spoken to yelled at by a language they can not recognize
why are children dying in the hands of ICE?
abandonment and layers of blue hues
time, you are building these mountains.
XXXII.
Once, I found everything about my father
photos birth death certificate journals ID wallet letters
long brown leather rectangle carrying its years
a golden in-circled star on it like a belt buckle
papa carried his wallet always in his back pocket
just a memory far away from truth
papa’s journal was full of songs poems
he had written
visions of yellowing pages with small black ink
I remember his handwriting so well and I do not have my father's handwriting
I have my mothers
along these pages a letter to my mother
numerous apologies to all the suffering
his long extracting goodbye
:: and I can not understand if that letter was making an ending or if it was only depicting a beginning to
LVII.
:: I told my mother once that I truly do not believe in his existence
She replied:
You exist, therefore he existed.
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::::::::::::::::::::::::: ::::::::::::::::::::
Time,
You place your hands on my lap. And display a graveyard.
::