I got more into art this decade and less into music; more into poetry and less into fiction.
Story
I wrote this based on a story my best friend told me about her childhood: of course, I significantly exaggerated and elaborated from there, as fiction writers are wont to do. It’s called “The Yellow Dress.”
Poetry/Art
I wrote a book of poems about the area where I was living in New Mexico at the time and illustrated it with pictures of that region. It’s called Litanies. I never did a PDF of the whole thing, so I’ll just include one of the poems and the photo that went with it here.
Things and their uses
Old stove under window in Polvadera ruin
She pushes bits of potatoes around the skillet so they won’t burn. The lard sizzles, and she is glad for the noise in the small kitchen so she can think to herself. Her ear, her cheek throb and ache, but she doesn’t dare raise a hand to them. But her back is to the kitchen, to the rustle of the newspaper at the kitchen table, and she can raise her eyes now, out the window. Out the narrow east window with the peeling screen the sun is striking the Quebradas a last blow before sinking out of sight, and the peaks blush and throb gold, orange, red and none of these but a light in between all of them. She smiles, and it hurts. The hurt is the most beautiful thing of all.
Broken pulley hanging above a dry well in front of the Las Nutrias church
Hand over hand over hand the bucket comes up. Slowly, the more slowly it comes the longer it will last, this good feeling of knowing what to do. Fires crackle and smoke, voices murmur, cows low. The drone keeps us from straining our ears into the twig-snapping cold, listening for the hooves of horses, the trilling cries. Maybe the Comanches won’t come at all; last year they didn’t. The bucket is almost to the top now, and it’s surprising, the cold that comes up with it, the cold of the grave seeping into this warmth of people and animals huddled together murmuring to keep the fear away with their hot breath. There is Juan Ortega stealing glances at Josefina Trujillo. Normally the girls are never allowed out, and yet here we all are crushed into this little courtyard wondering whose barns will be burnt, if anyone will be hurt or stolen. It makes all the rules we follow every day seem so stupid if in the end it all comes to this—young and old, dog, cat, and sheep all stuffed together waiting to see if the morning will come, or if it won’t.
A rusted wrecked jeep off the Escondida road, windshield frame bent double over the hood.
This pinche jeep never ran good in the first place! Stupid old man: “You’d better have that thing running when Johnny gets out.” His eyes get real little and mean like a pig’s. “He let you borrow it while he’s off serving his country, he says, his brand new car, his jeep and you drive it around like a melón with your good-for-nothing friends”—yeah, that’s right, ese, he was talking ’bout you! Ha. “And you wrecked it,” he says. Ay chingado, pinche cabron. Forget it. This piston ain’t never gonna budge no matter how hard I hammer it. “Which you should be doing,” he says, “serving your country, you lazy good-for-nothing cobarde, you’re no son of mine. You’re no real Torres. You probably went and failed that eye exam on purpose so you could stay here and booze it up with your lazy friends and make your mama cry.” Stupid old man. Johnny’s not coming home, man. Everybody knows it. If he was coming home, he’d be home already. He’s not coming home, and it just eats the old man up. His one true hijo, his pride and joy. Know what I’m gonna do if I ever get this piece-a-shit to run again? I’m gonna drive it off a fucking cliff. We’ll see what he says then, the old goat. We’ll see how he likes that.
Flat-bed roller skate lying on a child’s grave in San Juan cemetery, rusted, leather straps eaten off
Flying.
The teeth-rattling, bone-itching of the rough pavement stops.
In that moment everything stops, and there is just silence…
arms out wide
blue sky
and an arc that only rises.
Music
I wrote one song this decade–a little three-movement piano piece for my then-husband on our first wedding anniversary. I even recorded it on my new MIDI interface in Houston. But the sound file eventually became a casualty of our many computer transfers over the decade, and as I didn’t write the music down, most of the piece has been lost. I do remember the first movement, and I’m going to try to create something new with it. I’ll come back and update this post if/when I do.
The Rookery 