Chapbook Sample Poems

My People Redux
By Angela Trudell Vasquez

I.

Crossed rivers and high deserts
before water jugs littered parched lands –
rode motorbikes, carried comals, seeds,
black and white photographs.

Fought poor villagers on their homelands
went from high school to the front lines.
Lessons on patriotism led to flag burning,
joints lit, alcoholic stupors, streaking.

A roll of the dice:
heads I live, tails I leave.

My people, forgot they rose from the earth.

II.

Our great-grandpa knew
he planted corn rows
praying while he weeded
and walked between
his crooked lines,
singing to the clouds to come
lay their rain music down,
drum a new rhythm
tap the green stalks to grow.
He wove a footpath
from the back door
to the smallest plant
whispering its name
and fed his family
with what he wrought
from earth and aqua sky,
what he coaxed between loam
and hard copper hands.

III.

His kind fingers twist off pears, peppers,
slender green beans, husks of sweet corn,
crab apples and peaches –
what the white tailed deer did not nibble.

Bees buzz in their hive
lured by the burnt man who croons at dawn,
by his wife who brings him pan dulce
and black cream in the morning
in her pink house dress and potato sack apron.

Leather patched by sun in scarecrow clothes
muscles cling to his bones. Never young.
Family a heavy wool blanket covers his sins in the heat.

Blessed with grandchildren, they run in his rows,
bring him home books he cannot read. Pages
telling a history he corrects after cartoons each day.

IV.

Great grandchildren search for his buried grave
armed with spades and hoes
so they know where they came from
and can find their way back
to the original place of green grace
mountain breath, stews cooked with seeds
woven into a young girl’s black braid
sewn in the hem of her deer dress.

An Unexpected Parley in my Garden
By Thomas Erickson
(with Nods to Mikhail Lermentov and Charles Wright)

It’s been a nice June, mild and not humid. 
Good sleeping weather, as the weathermen say.

The hanging baskets and pots of flowers around
my house look great, too.  Maybe they look too
good, though.  It’s the thoughts of continuous watering
and deadheading that’s starting to keep me up at night.

I’ve been totally neglecting the black eyed susans
and cone flowers in my garden.  I asked one
of the susans if love was stronger than unlove
because of my other attentions this summer
and she inferred, by her winsome swaying
in the breeze, only the unloved know.

Well, I replied, eternal love isn’t possible
especially since you will be dead by October.
She shimmered ever brighter in the Sun
and signaled to me that any love,
other than eternal love, isn’t worth the trouble.

I got the hose and turned the sprayer from “stream”
to “love” and gave her a good watering all the while
thinking you’re doomed, doomed, poor thing,
well beyond any inclination I may have to save you.

Gijigaaneshiinh
By Elizabeth Tornes

Ojibwe for chickadee
sings his name
at dawn and at dusk,
gi-jee-gunay-shee….
Bird beloved
by my elders,
four chattery
syllables followed
by the diminutive
shiinh, which shrinks the bird,
a teacupful of song, weighing
two teaspoons of sugar.
A hunter once told me
gijaaneshiinh is a companion
to hunters alone in the woods,
brave sentinel who warns
of foxes, hawks and wolves.
He told me this
after digging a deep hole
through an ice crust
and placing my blanketed dog
into the earth. Gijigaaneshiinh
flew to the branch above us
and sang sweetly
it’s ok it’s ok it’s ok.