She gives me pecans and mangoes and onions

The birth of my own children

is what I give back.

.

My children walk here.

barefoot, brown-skinned, and thirsty.

A river runs through here;

cool water springs forth.

  .

Momma?

.

Misty Joann Marie Prestwich (9/26/1945 - 9/8/2011)

For All That You Held

Family, children, friends,

and storytellers

hold hands

to re-tell your history.

Many have faces

that resemble yours;

from every age

you ever were.

I remember

the rasp to your voice,

the reassuring pat

of your hand on mine.

Every burden

you lovingly shouldered

lightened the struggle

for the next.

Like paper dolls,

you held my hand,

so I could hold

the rest…

Your table is where

I came to;

where I dreamt and grew into

the me you knew I could be.

Kind mother,

dear friend, my personal historian,

from here into infinity,

you knew me so well.

Longing for

some comfort

through

this glowering loss,

my hands remember

the flicker of a pat…

and keep alive

your kindness.

Misty

memory holds

each storytelling

in the hand of the next.

~by Viktoria Valenzuela

It’d only been one week away from my kids.

My guts ached with longing for them.

Tia Belinda promised to bring me to Frank’s

if Momma could bring the children from Houston.

The half-way point

between Houston and San Antonio.

Momma and Tia Belinda split a giant cinnamon roll;

remembering their sisterhood.

The middle of me unclenched while holding the hands of my children.

~~~   ***   ~~~

A postcard poem by Viktoria Valenzuela

8-25-11

A silver foil banner

is strapped

to the Gothic molding

of the framed passage;

Colorful letters read “Happy Birthday”

The reflection of the room

is obscured

by one glint of sunlight

on the crimped banner;

as we celebrate the day of your birth.

~by Johnny Angel and Viktoria Valenzuela

Reasons for the Seasons

Far from being an arbitrary indicator of the changing seasons, March 20 is significant for astronomical reasons. On March 20, 2011, at precisely 7:21 P.M. EDT, the Sun will cross directly over the Earth’s equator. This moment is known as the vernal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere. These brief but monumental moments owe their significance to the 23.4 degree tilt of the Earth’s axis. Because of the tilt, we receive the Sun’s rays most directly in the summer. In the winter, when we are tilted away from the Sun, the rays pass through the atmosphere at a greater slant, bringing lower temperatures. If the Earth rotated on an axis perpendicular to the plane of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun, there would be no variation in day lengths or temperatures throughout the year, and we would not have seasons. (FactMonster.com)

Johnny Angel brought Spring with him when he was born. Just as the vernal equinox ushers in a warm breath of air, so too did this baby angel. His body was plump and healthy with life. Even the colors in the room seemed more vivid. The first sound of his lungs inhaling then screaming into existence shook off any fear I’d had about his health. Before him, I’d miscarried our first child.

The rhythmic bleating from his throat seemed to ask, Where am I from? Where am I going? Where is the music? His fingers outstretched to the sky. Searching, as if invisible piano keys were held there, mid-air, waiting for him to strike a chord. Instantly, I knew him.

I knew him before he was born. The large-eyed cherubic boy was placed on my chest to keep warm. I recognized him instantly. They lay him on the center of me, an eclipse of this angelic child. My eyes met his and succumbed to the chasm of his eyes forever. My boy!

***

His old gray fedora doesn’t match the forest green button down shirt or navy-blue Dickies, but I am grateful that Johnny Angel didn’t put his yellow silk tie on. In a matter of fact tone, he says he would like to write his own music. He’d like a keyboard for his 13^th birthday.

“There’s just not enough good Gothic music out there, Mom.”

“Oh really,” I ask.

“Yeah, I mean there’s tons of Emo and Punk stuff, but gah…. I like a more ambient sound. I know just how to make it,” he says fingering the air as if a piano is there, “I’m really good at the keyboard.” I can hear the passion for music beginning to build.

I remembered his birth. His fingers were long for a baby. He had seemed to be clawing the sky as he was born. Perhaps, he’d been playing a tune in Heaven before he became my Earth bound angel.

***

Sneaking into mother’s room is easy. Waking mother up can sometimes be unnerving. He stands in the doorway contemplating how to wake her gently. He wants to hug her and talk about what he’ll like her to make him for breakfast.

Johnny Angel knows to wake her up with a song. He strikes the play button on the CD player near the door, knowing that Donny Hathaway’s “Live Album” will play. His plodding steps towards his sleeping mother are almost silent. He stands at a slant near her bed. He watches her stir before inviting himself into her little arms. His body has long since outgrown the grasp of his mothers arms. She often hugs him and exclaims, “Look at my giant baby! He’s so big, he’s bigger than meee!” It’s true. He is the size of a grown man, and still growing. His already gruff voice is changing to an even deeper tone.

He’s been asked to play football and other sports, but he would rather draw, read comic books, and play music. He hopes he gets a keyboard with lots of bells and whistles for his birthday. If he had a keyboard he could write his own music. When Mom wakes up he will climb into her arms and tell her about the music he wants to make and about the big breakfast he would like her to cook for him. He slides closer to her.

A few bars of music album strike the air. Mother stirs…breathes deep… pushes herself up from the bed. She sees him. She looks right into Johnny’s eyes and smiles broadly before he swings his giant body into her arms. She scoot back, knowing enough to give him a lot of room or risk being smothered.

This poem is untitled, so we will call it:

Poem for day 3

Grammo’s hands are thickly wrinkled but strong.  She is a small woman, yet her hands seem large and cup all of me.  As she washes my hair her hands cover my whole face.  The curve where her index finger and thumb meet surround my forehead.  A barrier against the cup of water she pulls from the old ten gallon lard bucket now filled with bathing water.  She rinses me.  She washed all ten of her children in this cold empty tub… this way…  some of my cousins… and now me.
The drenching warmth covers my hair and her hands help the water rinse the soap out of my black curls.  Grammo’s hand cups my forehead against the water once again, the tips of her fingers touch my ears. Her grip is firm, her knuckles gnarled from years of farm work and later highly detailed seamstress work.  Yet the weight of her fingers are cushion by aging skin. I am pulled back a bit by the weight of her reaching over, dipping the cup back into the bucket of water, then dousing my crown.   She brings me forward again.  I won’t fall if Grammo has her hands on me.  The world is safe and warm so long as Grammo has her hands on it.

Daddy Says

Chairs-
sometimes pronounced shairs,
are for dads to sit in the center of the living room
in front of the TV
so that the children can pull his work boots off
after a long day of roofing.

Share-
sometimes pronounced Chare,
is when there is only one piece of Churches Fried Chicken
and you have one sister
and two brothers
little-er than you who are hungry too.

This poem is for yesterday when the challenge officially started:

Papers, Please!

The trees are as still as spiders,

lying in wait before the kill.

It’s the wind I rush to see captured.

The wind

to take away the sting of the sun.

The wind

to blow awry the weight of papers

stacked against us.

To the wind

I ask for a heavenly scent of hope;

a place where papers

are not required.

To the trees

I say hold back your spiders.

~VAV

I’ve been very busy writing a weekly blog for Being Latino Inc. on Facebook.  I’ve attacked many subjects from the point of view of a Chicana Momma.   My latest blog is a narrative of a phone conversation I had with a young man named Jose Anthony Rodriguez.  He has become a friend of mine, and I can only sing his praises so much.   He has over come such a tremendous hardship in just one short year.  He has given me full disclosure and detail of the story but out of respect for his plight, I made the story much more narrative than he had anticipated.  I believe the story should be told and retold so that the U.S. military policy of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell can be repealed.

It was not difficult to feel every breath he took or sympathize with the horror he endured.   No member of our services should ever endure what he has, yet it continues to occur.  Please read “With Bated Breath” and repost everywhere!  Rodriguez is currently seeking sponsors for his up coming gay pride marches as the human face of repealing DADT.  Respond to queenviktory@yahoo.com or Jose Anthony Rodriguez of the Sanctuary Project at joe25rodriguez@yahoo.com