Marisol Baca – The Last Home of Manuelita

Marisol Baca

The Last Home of Manuelita

she poured
ox blood
to set it
make the dirt still

hot iron
and board along a wall
ironing other people’s sheets
to make money

to enter
step down
a darkened room
the single step is wooden
and so worn
it is a smooth dip
the size of your shoe
floor is earth

window and lace curtain
sun escaping under mountains
dark earth below
and red dirt in the walls
rub a hand along
feel
what the hand makes

Marisol Baca’s artist statement:

Over the past 15 days, I have been writing a poem a day. This concentrated workload allowed me to sit face-to-face with poems that I have been wanting to write for a long time— stories that I have wanted to investigate for a long time. It was a difficult thing to do, but the right time to do it. These poems are about exploring the work of a favorite artist of mine and finding out more about my family history. The first eight poems are interrelated and are about the surrealist painter, Remedios Varo. Her paintings evoke wonder and curiosity in me, and I love them. The second set of poems deal with stories about my great grandmother and her sisters. There are some stories in these poems that I have been thinking about for a long time, maybe even years, and have not been able to write until now. Last week I had a dream about my great grandmother standing at the entrance of a doorway telling me to go ahead and get it done. So I did.