Gracie Azua

“home land”

The lentejas boil slowly—
Forearm strangles the breath the air smells of pine instead of mesquite
Brick instead of adobe; every now and
then the history isn’t the same
The broken record doesn’t play the same music Home land
resurrects itself in poetry you can't seem to write in
tenacity you lost in the flight;
A dove you hope is in mourning,
Is just a pigeon who
everyone decidedly forgot once they had no use for ‘em;
what the capitalist does to its beloved is more hell
Than my own desert; the obituary of my homeland
Is written in the sandstone of my mother’s mountain or 
In the thorns of my father’s cardón that i left behind
To pursue a new home

My City Lives In One Zip Code

Arms outstretched, my fingertips reach end to end of my city

As beautiful as the day I left her,

Smells collectively of discounted weed and overpriced manure

Roaming down her streets and avenues

I can remember, 

The señor sleeping on the bench next to the veterans memorial everyday

Sitting on a rusty metal bench with flaky blue paint

His meaty, grayed hands holding onto his shopping cart.

He held his smile like a sword against the summer heat, 

While I stuffed myself in the corners

Of the dusty library across the street,

My nose in a book, too afraid of 25 cent library fees

For poverty counted my pennies for the rent and said we barely made enough

But in the back of our section 8 apartment complex,

The mulberry trees always tasted sweet in the spring.

I was there,

Picking dandelions with my fatherless friends,

And we stuffed our faces until our lips and fingers turned black,

Turned the color of our my mother’s curly hair,

Until the police drove by with sharpened eyes at the skatepark,

And the cholios ran home with the crack in their pockets into the alleyways

Wished money grew on trees like greed grew in people’s hearts.

And I sat under the creamy orange street lights at midnight in high school

To cross over the dimly lit streets like feral cats hunting for food,

With people who carved their stories out of my life.

The entire galaxy watching every dent in the dirt we made, 

And I eyed my city up and down on the tattooed alleyway bricks.

Tell me which side of the tracks the paint drippings will narrate of my city

I wonder if they forgot the kids with bruised lungs and hollow stomachs,

For the cushy homes on the westside owned by politicians, correctional officers, and ICE agents

I wonder if my city changed her mind,

If she knows my father still haunts the vandalized blue trash bin behind the jack at the edge of town,

If she knows my mother still hands bible flyers at the Old Campo complex next to the fields,

If she knows my childhood still lingers in my bed, reeking of pee and assault,

And I wonder if my city will ever be my city again.