Were We Our Names
I would be the favorite gardening flower
Mexica planted along the aqueducts
My father, king of the world
wise defender with protective hands
If we were our names
Tía would be the mother of Christ
My grandmother, Christ himself in female form
My grandfather would be a lion and king
My sister a plant that signals spring
Deciduous and unafraid
And my mother
violet flower glitter, modest, and opposed
to bondage of any kind.
___
AL-JABR*
you prayed for me as I slept / word or imprint may die but they will never erase us
not the stone where we sat to rest, to share where we could find eat and drink / to walk beyond the ghost space where water once ran
we brace ourselves in the places we once bathed / walls we now brave, to know and be
known / they cannot exact us from this world
your last words to me like the next step, my small foot lifts / we who walk here still, we who are already unseen
we talk about you, story’s sweet embrace / we have learned to look down, lose ourselves in the crevices between stones, find ourselves– reliable geometry patterned square / cracked but unbroken
to move on, move forward / to feel your hand in hand with mine, memory / the ornate mandala of tile our ancestors lay / not dust, not rubble /not tossed like an empty plastic water bottle in the canal
whose water once rinsed our faces, cleansed our spirits / one foot on the ground, the next preparing for a new place, another realm / where there is less remembering
*al-jabr (الجبر), meaning ‘reunion/resetting of broken parts’ ---
7/23/2024
Dahlia Aguilar is an emergent Chicana writer in her 50s from Corpus Christi, TX. She’s an alum of Under the Volcano’s 2024 writing residency held in Morelos, Méjico. Her manuscript Tidal Range was a finalist for Trio House Press’ Louise Bogan Poetry Award 2024 and her work appears in Naugatuck River Review, Boundless 2024: the anthology of the Valley International Film Festival (FlowerSong), Write Until You Cry: A Jimmy Santiago Baca Anthology (FlowerSong), and the forthcoming anthology, Somos Xicanas (Riot of Roses). She lives in Ward 7 in the Deanwood neighborhood of Washington, D.C. with her son, two dogs and menopause.
