Marisol Baca
Marisol Baca
Lorem Ipsum
Dolor Pulnivar
Estern Velces
Orevem Lorces
2 Poems
BIO:
Marisol Teresa Baca graduated from Fresno State University with a BA in English, where she received the Andres Montoya Poetry Award. Marisol received her Master of Fine Arts at Cornell University in Ithaca New York, where she was the recipient of the Robert Chasen Poetry Award, and was an editor at the award winning EPOCH journal out of Cornell University. She lives in Fresno, CA with her little dog, Sopapilla, teaches English and continues to write poetry. She has just recently finished writing a book of poems titled, Revelato.
Sarcophagi in Glass Houses
[after an installation at The Storm King Art Center, and the death of my Great Aunt]
I.
Manuelita sent Mom and Auntie Patsy
into the podding room
Piles of chile
skins like dried meat
Mom and Auntie Patsy hitching
the meat out
pulling the seeds and membrane
from the inner lining
little fingers tugging at the green tongues
speechless in their hands
packing them into glass jars
The day of death was passing by
the coffin on the coffee table
the old sitting together
the men’s heads
white and scattered
like seeds
Manuelita passing out crocheted
kerchiefs
monogrammed
and stained
Uncle Benito had to hold on
his wife
looked up from the coffee table
she looked up, but was already dead
Auntie Patsy was tired
of the piles that smelled burnt
the piles my mom kept jumping in
the look of the chilies
mouthless
stemless
plucked
the candles were lit
in the little earthen room
rain began to fall with tin sounds on the roof
and the dead woman smiled from the trees
they had welts on their hands
the chili had been too hot to eat
II.
They arrive in pods
The pods are much too tight
They break the sides open
III.
Manuelita constructed her home
with an horno in the kitchen
she only burned cedar wood
she had burn marks along her arms
kept feeding the horno
glass shards
cedar wood
But we sold that house
we sold the great cottonwoods
outside that house
and the red chile ristras
those she plumed
and fed to us
IV.
It was in New York,
much later
I walked in the hills
and stayed close to the water
away from the groves
I found these constructed graves
these insect wrappings
these mummies
and all I could do
was talk to her
I think she hoped
I’d come along
take hold of her
move her story
across the weatherworn panes
tell her New York is the secret
passage to Corrales, N.M.
near the horses
near the great white sand dunes
near the adobe house
built around her imprint
And Hatch Chile in August
rain, acidity,
the roasters large as entry rooms, foyers
churning pods by the hundreds
the burn in our lungs
the burn in our eyes
the whole town crying
and the women by the stove
Glass houses make for good mirrors.
V.
Great Gods of the mountainside
please spare us the duty of eating
please spare us the acid tongue
the skins and their veins burst
and smell of her
the casings by the molcajete
like translucent tombs
waiting to lend themselves to stone
waiting to affect on the mouth
the acerbic bite and the swelling
waiting, waiting for the opiates
of the body to pump and roll
VI.
Houses the dead
houses the lines
and the lines
between us
houses the slow
shag in our dark past
past the houses on the right
the houses on fire
houses the houses on fire
the houses that house
how houses have past
lined by lines
lines of grass
lined pictures fading on walls
lined windows,
shingles, and rats
and the houses house us,
the dead and us
Apple Orchard
Corrales, New Mexico, summer 1982
I.
We drove past the river and into Bernalillo.
There were crosses in my aunt’s eyes.
The mountains call you back, she said.
The Sandias rose before us.
Clean pink peaks and the crags below—dark and greenish.
We drove into the dim patches,
Beyond the old house was the apple orchard.
San Juans and Roman Beauties were close to dropping.
We would be picking soon—culling and shining.
Wild asparagus grew in patches among the trees.
II.
She watched her mother being lowered into the ground.
A childhood wrapped in an old black dress.
She went crazy—all fury and open-mouthed
over her coffin.
My aunt held her back.
She made sounds like horses running.
My aunt’s arms stretched out, gripping the coffin
She struggled to climb on top.
I was too young, I sat in my mother’s lap.
everyone watching everyone crying
and uncle Benny falling to the floor.
mama, mama.
III.
Beyond the orchard, a ditch,
attractive with slender saltgrass and buffalo grass,
infested with piquant creosote
and in the bed, a roily nest of water.
Beyond that ditch, the earth stopped.
The edge of the world stayed back, beyond the ridge, waiting.
My uncle said there were alfalfa fields that went on and on
until they hit the mountains.
But I knew what was really there.
I knew the smell of green apples the same way.
The familiar dreams of falling over that edge,
sun in my eyes, the taste of dirt,
the itchy tall grass and weeds, giving way.
I could smell the horses far off in the neighbor’s field.
I could feel the void beneath my leather sandals.
IV.
My grandmother lost her face in the mountains.
She watched them the year she broke.
watched them turn gray, to pink, to red.
She saw things in them.
Once an Indian’s face,
another time, her own
looking back.