You seed your war in my home over my tongue
and I refuse it
ten napkins, 11,12, 13, and 14 cannot suffice
to clean policies or gunmen
or blood on the cement of Asian seniors pushed
to the ground because their ancestors were
not white. Those napkins cannot wipe off or wrap around the feet of mother and child, and when their bus arrives from TX & AZ
to DC seeking asylum
it cannot clean the dirt of free labor and a system of incarceration for the poor as its substitute from the spine of an American history book
You seed war in the only home I have ever known
but I plant words of  remembrance and accept the past with its flower of responsibility
In the only home I have ever known, this earth, I plow &
toil for the possibility of a dignified life for all tender creatures under the sun I cannot refuse to the manuring, the irrigation and the weeding for someone else did the soil preparation and the sowing and they will do the harvesting and storing

my eyes are two ponds in each a Fernald's iris floats
...
that night in each picture taken the light, shining off the optic nerve, moved from left to right like two dancing irises reacting to the ripples of my tiny apartment life full of books, domestic cookery, Bluetooth Son Jarocho canciones, and the bright reminder in your eyes that closed of laughter because I passed you the fork instead of opening the refrigerator door. Your lashes looked like the sun's rays your joy traveling to me at their speed before we locked eyes you stood still and gazed at me as I were you and you were me. One cannot laugh at such moments, the profound inclination to smile when one sees the beauty of a sunset over Dockweiler beach or the inevitable beauty of wild northern California flowers swaying in the wind disarms you of all, all mixing spoons and guitar music went. my ponds  silent witnesses  to the bright promise in your eyes,   I thought we were so close to the lips of world peace
...
what is your wish he asked me "I wish we could see ourselves as each other" he laughed "If we could do that, there would be no need to be here. There would be peace on earth "

She is a seamstress pulling
strands of words from the ether
into the wooden loom beneath her

Despite all the sorrows, I love the first ominous eye blinks
that come with my body’s rising
to meet this new day; they signal
I am alive– I take the gift of open knowing they must close. Blink. Blink. All material lives close. Life, my life a blink in the cosmic morning. I blink starring out the window, how much I love this life even this monsoon storm.

I live and die by         poetry

      I live hundreds of lives            notebooks
of lives
     I die 100’s of times       in the silence 
of a spiral
                       And I am reborn    
To this wheel of                            samsara    
           
           ­      with every turn of the page

he did not just push off her center of gravity provoking
her to fall and then exclaim "watch out where you are walking"

he did not just slap her across her face and call her a "puta"
insulting her and forcefully ****** her until he fell asleep and she slipped from under him

he did not whisper in her ears "I'll **** you"
like once he so boldly declared to my brother with the more metaphorical phrase "I will put a bullet in your head"

this time he beat her until his sisters showed up  
one of them was silent the other  preached "she deserved it"

this time he beat her: combo-ed  his attack and added whatever strength was left in 60-year-old body

that in our video chat my mother was bruised
all over her petite frame

this time after a lifetime of abuse, she did not defend her honor
she did not stay for fear of losing her golden cage or for her children this time she left safely picking the right time with her son

filed the report, got a lawyer walked up the steps of the court
battered-
                                                      ­       and lighter
                                                  lighter­
                                         becoming    
                                 up
                      step
     in  each


to her freedom, I sing a praise, and I reach my palms up to the heavens; they are open,  and I weep for the years she stood there always the "one to blame"

Me rindo
ha esta vida divina
y fatal