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Winter 2018/19


Viktoria Valenzuela

BARRIO SAN ANTO 

A woman bent
    to pick tufts of synthetic cotton from the ground.
She said, “Oh, excuse me; con permiso.”
    Her round face held the pain of a Tejana mother, aged valleys and low sloping hills.
I'm from here
    --and there,
I've mostly ever known the swelling terrain of the Great Lakes
Evergreens probably would never thrive here,
Nor nopales there... yet, here I stand waiting for a bus to downtown.
    I am a different kind of woman
One who watches the horizon
for what may come. A bus? A stranger? A neighbor or hint of moon.
I spend my day writing out expressions
    about our barrio --of which grandmom called Tripa Heights.
She had a way of renaming for us in the best ways
    “What, Heaven?” she'd implore.
She meant to translate our world to living light
                To wrap up experience like a baby and put it in my arms.
I held her as heaven-- little arms outstretched in the sun.
    The sky of our youth warm and green
The long grass and I stood at the bus stop
    Prickling at summer clouds floating through our barrio.

VIKTORIA VALENZUELA is a creative nonfiction poet activist whose work appears in such publications as MUTHA MAGAZINE, AMP (Hostra University), THE MALCS JOURNAL and A PRINCE TRIBUTE ANTHOLOGY: I ONLY WANTED ONE TIME TO SEE YOU LAUGHING. She is an educator, a Macondista, and the organizer of 100 thousand poets for change in San Antonio. Her writing keeps keen focus on Chicana mothering as decolonization and political action.



 


 

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