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The 101 slopes like a spine bent too long.
Camarillo yawns wide in the morning hush,
valley stretching slow, hills bare-shouldered,
fields glistening, half-asleep, half-prayer.

Lemon trees blink slow, bruised gold in the mist.
Figtrees call a name behind a rusted gate.
Sagebrush whispers gossip through chainlink,
its breath full of stories that outlive the tellers.

To the east, the nursery stirs,
plastic sheeting *****,
row tags flutter in the wind.
A thermos, abandoned, rests by a wheelbarrow.
Mud boots, discarded,
stand like sentinels
against the wood plank wall.
No footsteps follow.
I never asked where they went.

Matilija poppies raise their paper-white heads,
and the raspberries, furred with morning dew,
shiver, just slightly,
as if remembering friends
they were no longer allowed to say aloud.

A coffee roaster hummed somewhere distant,
low and steady, warming the wind.
That scent I never could shake,
burnt and sweet.
I could almost belong here again,
but it’s not mine without them.

I worked inside this valley with my back.
With my knees.
With the same hands,
now soft on the wheel,
muscle memory steering roads
as if nothing ever left,
as if the ghosts still ride along.

I pass a strawberry field, stitched in silence,
no voices rising in laughter today,
no corrido escaping from a shirt pocket radio,
no teasing between the furrows,
no calloused hands tossing tools,
only the soft ticking of irrigation
and the hush of work
that now waits for no one.
This silence has been swept, labeled,
nothing out of place but sadness.

I was here with them,
but only as a pair of eyes,
that never opened wide enough.

The strip mall stands like a broken promise,
painted stucco, faded western wear,
alongside roadside markets
missing the opening crew.
Still, the hills lean in to listen,
velvet green with memory,
quiet as folded hands.

Even now, under this sun,
the dust knows who knelt here.
Who sang into the rows,
who fled before sundown,
their names erased from the ledger
but carved into the earth.

And in soil’s hush, their names still root and rise.
In the aftermath of the immigration raids, the migrant workers I knew in Southern California, especially in Ventura County, began vanishing overnight. Faces I shared shifts with, broke bread with, waved to across the nursery lots and strawberry rows, disappeared without a word. Their absence is not abstract, it’s in the empty chairs at the diner, the shuttered produce stalls, the silence where songs and stories used to rise. These are the hands we rely on, the hands that shape the harvest, and now they hang suspended in uncertainty. The fields remember them, even when the papers do not.
hsn Apr 2
i smiled when spoken to.  
         nodded at the right times.  
   dressed myself in fabric  
              heavy with approval,  
       let them rewrite my name  
                    in letters i could not read.  

   was this what they meant by righteousness?

           i stepped in line,  
             shoulder to shoulder,  
                  head to the ground,  
      voice swallowed whole.  

(do not stray.  
                 do not ask.  
                          do not falter.)  

   but when i prayed,  
             i found no voice.  
    when i knelt,  
                  i found no floor.  
    when i searched,  
                i found only mirrors,  
                           only echoes,  
                                      only dust.  

   was this what they meant by devotion?

         they said,  
  we will make you whole.
           we will scrape away the excess.
                   we will leave nothing but light.

   so i let them take,  
               let them pare me down,  
                         let them erase,  
                                   let them shape.  
(smaller,  
           softer,  
                      easier.)  

   but when i looked for myself,  
             i found nothing.  
   when i called my name,  
                         there was no answer.  
   when i reached out,  
                    my hands met air.  

was this what they meant by salvation?
evangeline Mar 19
For you,
I feel an ancient yearning
Baked into my bones
A cosmic ache-
A prehistoric hunger-
A primitive pining

Yes,
It’s a supernatural connection—
Mine and yours—
A rest-the-vessel,
Let-the-tides-guide,
Sacred sort of love

Because betwixt us,
There is a longing
Only the moon
No — only god, herself  
And all her sapphic sovereignty
Could resist

There is a glowing desire
So fervent within us
That I wish I could reach into your Heavenly Body
And pull out your stars  
And thread them into the nest of my womb

An immortal, galactic romance—
Ours is—
Fit for gallery halls and poetry readings
And woven with all the glittery things  
But it’s Roommates, they’ll call us
Roommates, reads our plaque

Roommates—
Not lovers, nor sweethearts
Not partners, nor darlings
No lust
No lore
The saga of us, enduring no more

Celestial stains and divine shame
Roommates, we’ll remain
So we’ll guard this holy matrimony,
We’ll let our lovers’ anthem die
We know the truth is in the stars
We know who lives a lie
fish-sama Dec 2024
Life is a pencil.
I scribble and scribble tornadoes to
use the lead as quick as possible to
forget the time lost
until the blunt tip gives in to
metal holding the
erasure
of all
worth.
Will my legacy be meaningless lines,
poetic words or
simply nothing?
Erwinism Sep 2024
We spend so much time blinking and looking away,
we blink so much that we don’t realize our fuse is alight.
A turn of the dial,
into another scene,
never rooted in the moment,
as transient as everything mortal.
We blink, to erase the unpleasant,
we blink, to jump forward,
coil our bodies around rest,  
wrap paychecks inside our hands,
so, we can blink a little more.
We skip and jump out of the day,
when tomorrow is worse than today,
we blink it away,
as if we have unlimited blinks,
and soon enough we’ll hit a wall
and wish we could have kept our eyes open
more frequently.

—e.d. maramat | erwinism
Riz Mack Apr 2024
I wanted to tell you, that it's been nice


                                    I think we're all going to die



Really?


                That's true


                                    I made it up



Nothing happens

                                 afraid of underwhelming
a blackout piece after Anais Vionet
Mamie Hogan Nov 2020
I.

I approached and
this ghost came readily:

Sunny,
her long hair
tied in early years

In summer passed the footsteps
of her father, her sisters who
locked at all times
the house

II.

I
fell in love

Sunny, overcome to prove
the validity
of a plane crash in 1942

Sunny states that she moved beyond time
I find the love that she spent
surrounding the alleged spirit

the long hair
her own gold locks
the question

III.

the ghost lived
that she would come back
spend the rest of her 20 memories
stay the night

or two or
four

the smell the
worsening pain
neared
reached the floor

IV.

her long hair
lifted in the air she

met her shocked face
10 feet away

touched her own mystery

rushed and let and
heard the piano play on
in a room from
every light in time

time

V.

I find myself leaning
I am first to cry
the stories
the ghost
the ever-present opportunity

the full-moon-glow of just:

a house.
This is an erasure of an article found in my college's weekly newspaper. The article was written by a skeptical student about the spooky legend of a house near our college campus.
Tryniti Jun 2020
Abandoned under the guise of self-sacrifice
How many times have you told these lies

A wonder to behold in your own right
Latching on, holding tight
I was lost the moment I got in your sights

A silver tongue with unmatched wit
Even the most dominant would submit
To your linguistic lashings

Skilled in verbal maneuvers and molding minds
You reveled in being one of a kind

Sly, and slick, smooth and quick
Your trick was finding what made me tick

You made me yours, then slipped away
I was your toy, begging to play

But then you were done; tired I suppose
You disappeared, to where..god only knows

You played the martyr, a victim, a pawn
Suddenly all of your power was gone

I know better, but I still feel incomplete
The flavor of erasure is so bittersweet
05.31.2020
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