Sarah A. Chavez

I Count

the bricks in the path: old
bricks, new bricks, broken
bricks, bricks enrobed 
in moss. 

I count the budding peppers
on the Fresno chile, the purple
sprouts in the potato patch,
the bulbs that have opened
on the star plant, the buds 
holding a tight fist, the petals
which have dried & dropped
from the stem.

I count the barks from the tiny
Shih Tzu next door. I count 
the number of breathes in which
the neighbor yells, Shut up! 
I count the piles of dirt I dug 
from the earth, the number 
of rocks I pulled out.

I count the mornings I wake
to sunlight and the mornings
I wake to rain. I count the beers
left in the fridge, the boxes
of dinner proteins frozen,
the remaining granola bars
in the big glass jar in the cabinet.
I count the cabinet doors, 
the crumbs on the counter, the
specks of dust floating in 
from the open window. I count
the whole of these to keep 
from counting the days 
since you left.

Sarah A. Chavez

Halfbreed Helene Goes to the Beach

I.

Her people have a complicated relationship to large bodies of water. 

It’s something the brownest shouldn’t have been forced to travel through
and something the whitest hadn’t seen until the mid-20^th century. 

It’s something the middle-class book a Best Western by for their children to visit
on slow summer weekends.

It’s something the working-class leave at 7 a.m. with two coolers of food that need
to last the day, cuz there’s only money enough to buy one soda per person 
and since this will more than likely be the only day in six months or more
the adults get a “vacation,” they stay. The Whole. Day.

Her white mom and fair-skinned sister would burn being anywhere outdoors
all day. Helene has seen the blistering at the lake when the sun shifted through the shade
of the pines. H had forgotten all about that until she’s there almost by accident
at the beach 25 miles down I-5. She’s watching skinny-ribbed, shirtless children
get stopped by their red-haired, sun-bonneted mother, long legs sprouting
from the petals of a white bathing suit cover.

H came alone, almost as if the water were calling. She’d picked up a coffee
and four cookies from the vegan panadería, and then just kept driving.
She forgets how she’s supposed to feel once in the face of the water. Forgets
to think on anything other than the bipolar lapping of the tide. Aggressive
and loud, pounding the rock edges, then gently and quiet, licking folks’ toes.

You’re a fickle beast, H says out loud to the water, knowing anything she says will
be swallowed immediately. The water takes what’s their’s. That much is clear.

II,

When Helene looks at the water, she realizes that it 
is all water. Not as in separate from sand and rocks 
and crabs, but all water is water. 

Not this water is connected to other bodies of water,
but this water is that water, that water is this water.
The water in the Sound, the water in Bass Lake,

The water in the Ohio River, the water from her 
bathroom faucet, spurting uncontrollably from a fire
hydrant. It is all water. And when she whispers

See you later, to the water at the beach, she means
that she will return to the beach, but also that she and
the water will revisit one another at the fountain

in the square, in the kitchen tap, in the sweat
that beads on her brow as she walks back to her car.

III.

If all water is water, Helene thinks, what else
is whole and omnipotent? Is grass grass? Ants
ants? Is abuelita abuelita abuelita? Certainly
the sky is sky. That one is clear and has always
been clear. Clear as the crystalline of the clouds
which are clouds, everywhere clouds.

Sarah A. Chavez

Halfbreed Helene Contemplates Protest Capitalism

Waiting in line at Safeway, Helene scrolls 
the pics on Wildfang’s Instagram 
admiring the straight-cut collared shirts. 

She pauses on one embossed with protest
buttons: “Cuz Liberty Was A Lady Too,” 
“Honk for Choice,” and “I Believe You.” 

But do they? H thinks. Always there seems 
in the commercial air to be a twinge 
of uncontextualized doubt that there could be 

so many unwanted hands touching hair and grabbing 
ass in public. Why, by these accounts it would seem 
to never abate . . . H considers the $52 commitment 

to wearing her over-taxed anger like a commodified 
protest trend. So many tshirts now and buttons and signs
in the living room windows of her white neighbors. 

Of course, she should be happy about this. They are
trying (visibly). They are doing all but raising 
a closed white power fist in the direction 

of their black and brown neighbors. See, 
their tshirts and bumper stickers and lawn signs 
are saying, I’m not one of those. I gave 

a donation to __________ . And yes, their money
is helpful, and yes, their inclusively aware 
interjections in white spaces are helpful, and yes,

not all do ___________, . . . but H finds 
their fragile, self-focused fear exhausting. 
Their neon insistence on Twitter creates a nagging 

irritation in her chest, like the feeling of catching 
a gnat in the eye. You can see around it, but such 
distracting irritation! If it stays in, everything goes red. 

Folks say not to touch it, it’ll just make it worse, but all 
you want is to stab a stubby finger in to dig it out. 
This is the thing she has the most trouble with—

Almost never can she leave well-enough alone.
Helene always—eventually—makes things worse.
And to what end? her mother asks. What do you 

care? Yes. And there it is, the reminder
of halfness. Her inability to be wholly any/one
thing: not white enough to not be affected, not

brown enough for the most extreme violences.
She sighs into the small bright screen in her hand,
glare from the neons overhead. Glare in her eyes.

That’s when H notices, behind her in line, 
a tired-eyed, slope-shouldered Latina, with two 
small children. Papi, no. Don’t touch that. Put it 

back, the woman keeps saying to the small 
caramel-eyed, curly-haired human knocking candy 
bars and gum packs onto the floor. H looks up from

her phone at the baby in the cart and the baby
looks right back at her with clear, focused eyes.
It feels as if the child is seeing into her mixed-

blood soul, can sense her feral insecurity, her
confused anger and intrinsically knows, even 
at such a short stage of development, its eventual

anger, its sense of self as oppressed or oppressor
will be more whole than she could ever be.