"Ancestral Emigration", "Post-Modern Remembrance" and "Pre-European Vision" by Diego Luis.
Ancestral Emigration
they left their home
like the tear of melting
wax, fleeing flame,
and famine,
and the wicked chemistry of conquest
in palm-branch boats bobbing
with children clutching
wicker baskets and dehydrated biscuits,
they left their home,
for a fantasy, a frayed image,
a sea-bound journey with salt
in every breath, speckled nights
to populate dreams, flagging muscles,
always a rock away from sleep,
a roll away from razor teeth,
and their limbs had no strength
but their own, specters of themselves,
glass-empty faces gazing, from
horizon to horizon, until the sea,
at last, deposited their wrecked bodies here,
in a strange, hostile land,
far from home
Post-Modern Remembrance
The boot prints have long faded,
the crosses rotted, the people forgotten.
The valley remains, under a different name,
but even this, the earth must claim,
as it always has, root by root. Skeletons,
mine and yours, shall wither and be dust,
for all history ends, my friend. In the meantime,
you can pay 50 pesos to walk the stone forts
where they crucified my ancestors. Free on Sundays.
Pre-European Vision
My head sags. Sleep comes
like the slow roll of a heavy
tear, and rows on rows
of cattle lift twinkling
dust to the low-sun shadows
caressing the plain. The earth
hums, wind and hoof; everyone’s
daughter will drink milk and kneel
by fire tonight. A cold stone surrounds
and slows my veins—will I
be the first to sleep, to turn
away the evening,
to invite the dawn to pierce
the quiet? Maybe I’ll rest
in the river’s dream, a sallow
star adrift in winter, gone
south to seek the land’s warmth.
Diego Luis writes that his poems are ways of processing his Latino cultural and historical heritage. Luis is currently studying history at Brown University and his poetry has previously appeared in Poetry Quarterly, Hawai'i Review, About Place Journal, Harbinger Asylum, Torrid Literature Journal, and VOC for POC.