When I smile there are beautiful lines under my eyes
and I do not want to hide them

I bear with great joy this life of mine

que tierna
la alas de
un pajarito

que de su  ser
trajo a otro ser

liviana es
su despejar

el viento
a las alas
carga

el viento
mi amor
levanta hacia
mi viejo padre

today
I set another boundary
painted his face with forgiveness


I whispered lovingly
"thank you for raising me."

today, I unfriended him
my reflection answered
"But you look like his mother."

my jawline with its sharp line
history seems as linear, but I do not
want to fall in its linearality  

my will flutters among
the company of monarchs
that have come to represent
the migrant women and men
of the Americas  

a monarch like
my grandmother once was
while she inevitably stood
in front of her mirror, I am placed
in front of mine

all my aspirations
grow wings and set
their destination for a healing
climate

"thank you for raising me
but I cannot let you
break my wings, too"

thank you,thank you
thank you

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.