08-22-2023
IN MY HEART
in my heart no circus
in my heart no cages
in my heart no stampedes
in my heart no whirlpools
in my heart no quicksand
in my heart no raging fires
in my heart no guilt
in my heart no shame
in my heart no chaos
in my heart no bitterness
in my heart nothing left unsaid
in my heart tawny fields of tall grass
in my heart drifting clouds
in my heart flowering vines
in my heart mesquites and huizaches
in my heart sycamores and cedars
in my heart every small and humble green
in my heart blooming ocotillos and crowns of thorns
in my heart the peaceful lapping of the wide river
in my heart the light of his eyes that will never leave me
in my heart a thousand thousand conversations
in my heart the hand i held even after it went cold
my friend said, you see, hardly anyone knows what peaceful grief looks like
IT'S THE OLD HUNGER TO GROW WILD
and sprout poems
to make composted earth of my flesh and my breath earth turned
relentlessly and simmered slowly with the weight of memory and
desire and the deep deep clench of muscle and yearning
i ate the seeds i ate all the seeds bit them chewed
them let them rest on my tongue tasted their sweet their
bitter their salt i gathered the roots gossamer and rough knotted things and
branching masses in my hands and shoved them into my hair
the earth must think us flowers flowers of meat
and air flowers that grunt and weep and laugh slow flowers that
uncurl and reach for the sun and bloom and seed and
darken and wither and fall flowers that crumble like all flowers that will feed
her
i will give you more flowers than you can eat
push them into your mouth with my mouth lick them into you thrust
them into the hollow of your chest curl them beneath your eyelids
whisper them over your skin until they dissolve into you
i am eating flowers and the petals are spilling out of
my mouth out of my eyes out of me spilling and spilling i am
birthing flowers devouring devoured blooming bursting i am
eating flowers life eating life death eating death my flesh
flowers
LOT K32
it’s roughly 3 feet by 7 feet
there are no lines to separate
one lot from another
wild grass wildflowers
a few small stones
spillover of red brown mulch
from the lot next to it
it’s quiet here
the traffic is a far off sound
even though the road isn’t far
it’s all the trees mostly oaks
pecans cottonwoods cedars
it doesn’t seem to matter
what time of the year it is
there are always butterflies
birds darting from place to place
green leaves on the trees
and golden leaves fluttering down
my brother is buried in Lot K31
we bought both plots at the same time
i didn’t know his would be vacant
for such a very short time
i wonder if he knew different
wonder if he held on to make sure
i had a signed contract in hand
he was buried the way he wanted
on a wooden pallet
wrapped in a cotton shroud
surrounded with flowers
from head to foot
a bouquet laid over his chest
no coffin no concrete no embalming
no separation from the earth
before the year is out
it’ll be five months since he was buried
i don’t think it’s my imagination
but the burial mound seems to be
as high as it ever was
the only thing that’s different
is the permanent flat stone
that bears his name
and the dates of his life
and my name for him
when i visit i take
a little stepladder to sit on
i unfold it over Lot K32
because it seems disrespectful
to sit elsewhere and possibly
intrude on someone else’s grave
at least here i know it’s vacant
and i hope to leave it vacant
for at least another three decades
letting the leaves flutter down
and the wild grass grow
i took care of him
for all but seven years of his life
in the afterlife there will be
no need to look after each other
his spirit in the unfurling
of all green things and the dew
is free of all pain and memory
and mine will return to the wind
as free as it ever dreamed of being
but here beneath this earth
we will never leave each other
we will be siblings of the soil
-from the eaters of flowers (forthcoming 2024, Saddle Road Press), selected by Assistant Editor, Karen Carr
ire’ne lara silva, the 2023 Texas State Poet Laureate, is the author of four poetry collections, furia, Blood Sugar Canto, CUICACALLI/House of Song, and FirstPoems, two chapbooks, Enduring Azucares and Hibiscus Tacos, and a short story collection, flesh to bone, which won the Premio Aztlán.ire’ne is the recipient of a 2021 Tasajillo Writers Grant, a 2017 NALAC Fund for the Arts Grant, the final Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Award, and was the Fiction Finalist for AROHO’s 2013 Gift of Freedom Award. Most recently, ire’ne was awarded the 2021 Texas Institute of Letters Shrake Award for Best Short Nonfiction. ire’ne is currently a Writer at Large for Texas Highways Magazine and is working on a second collection of short stories titled, the light of your body. A new poetry collection, the eaters of flowers, is forthcoming from Saddle Road Press in January 2024.
