Meditative Week of Poetry: Ruben Quesada
In the backyard, my mother plants strands of razzleberry fringe flowers. Next door the chartreuse golden feather fare well. Before I am born, my mother is acquired by the United States—coerced by some American zodiac dream she fled to Los Angeles and decades later she still withholds from speaking English, and only fertile names of flowers have taken root. She is luminous. Her hair, a blackish grey against the philodendron, long and parted in the center. I lose her in the shade of overgrown impatiens hanging onto the hillside behind the house. The horizon waves in lines of barberry and nettles, silver waves of wild deer grass. I have not spoken to my mother in years. Today I surprise her with a visit and in the window’s glow I watch her work. I have taken the shape of her hips.
