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Marisol Baca – Swell

Marisol Baca

Swell

New Mexico 2019

the night before I carried
my father’s ashes to the mountains of his home
I walked to the edge of the roiling dark of the Rio Grande river
thick water of memory and suffering

Guadalupe? I asked
be with me and my sisters tonight
I dipped a bowl
I took from his kitchen
stainless steel
and this night it reflected the moon
I dipped it into the water
while I kept balance holding on to a do-not-swim sign post
it could have said anything
it could show a cartoon silhouette of a woman holding an infant
one arm raised to motion for help

swell the swift running current
the secrets of babies lost in the wild and an attempt
to cross over
little owlets flying through a forest under the current

we light candles with a bowl of the water
we write our mothers and grandmothers and great aunts names down
we say our father’s name and pour oils and herbs into the water
it’s a prayer for those who were not protected
for those who, right now are unprotected

Guadalupe — Pachamama
protect them all if you can
swell the lacquered water up on to the bank
swell the emptying of the bowl back into the water
swell the many who suffered here in her swollen
muddy and icy current
swell the hands of the virgin

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.

Marisol Baca – Ode to a Rusty Square Nail

Marisol Baca

Ode to a Rusty Square Nail

The people living here before left many things
objects that have become junk
large collections of rusted sinks,
skeletons of farm equipment, car engine parts
until they became hills hidden in a thin layer of dirt
and Bermuda grass
so many hills that the land was not flat
no one knowing where the earth started and where ruin was
the people also left
many square rusted nails

My husband finds them around the property
to me they are artifacts in dim dreams
they are square hands finishing the shed
square mouths talking
the square of the edge of wood that fixed itself to another
until there was a house
or maybe the nail was before the house
because this house was once a tinier version of itself
the house grew and the mice grew and the horses lived in the pasture
and birthed colts

I wonder how long this nail will last
My husband brought it in from the yard
how long before it is chewed and digested by the earth’s insatiable movement
I wonder when it will melt into the history of this land
becoming a rust stain
on a piece of stone

A square nail is practical
slightly primitive and strangely heavy in my hand
wedging together a weight far greater than itself

it is found in the ground on its sides
it is charged with the sun and the rain
it is alone in its metallurgy
gifted from people whose faces are grim and broad and straight
they left it without knowing its true value
they left it to become the earth before it could do that itself
it is still whole and separate like a hill off the ground

a wooden box
a copper pipe
a cement flower
the sealing of a coffin
earth to earth
metal, dense, impressed
the patina coming off on my hand
microscopic cracks and crags
like little X scratches along the flattened surface
the want is to stand it on its point and hit it
drive it in
seal the casket
splinter one side to another

Marisol Baca’s artist statement:

Marisol Baca – Self Portrait of the Artist Holding a Thistle, Albrecht Dürer

Marisol Baca

Self Portrait of the Artist Holding a Thistle, Albrecht Dürer

I wash my hand over the blossoms
with their vigilant, abusive growing
the softest part, like filaments of milkweed,
engraved into my skin
don’t let go

It’s a strange masochism
picking a flower that causes pain
searching the eyes for a look that will not be there

~ ~ ~

What did it mean for him to suffer?
bound in a small, insignificant gift
of thistle
for himself
on his wedding day

We knew he hid messages in his etchings
the thistle, a symbol
of an oath
attentive to his own hands
clean, intense, muscled, delicate
positioning the weed’s abnormal, angled stem

The mirror,
the strange positioning of his face
not moving, but moving
the hand to paint

He would be readying himself
the Christ pose, years later

To position and paint again
the layered brush stroke
He loved that woman and his suffering

~ ~ ~

My husband wore a thistle in his lapel
at our wedding
this ritual does not belong to my people or his
it was stolen from out of Europe—just taken

It was propagated
and the blossom was a thick grey heart,
the leaves were hands that were perfectly placed—
even with their ragged saw-tooth sides
tucked into a slot on his tuxedo
a facility of obvious suffering

find them growing on the escarpment,
near the San Joaquin River,
the path obscured by fog
crowned
alive in their clustered snarl
chokes the throat
leaves stickers on lips
hangs on to the tip of a skirt

~ ~ ~

Or perhaps, that painting is all about Albrecht, himself
as an artist and a man
holds loose the stem of the plant
wears an embroidered coat
red pomp hat

He is marking
his place
All I am is set forth by the lord
After all, what is suffering like the life
sacrificed for the god?

Marisol Baca’s artist statement:

Jeffrey Schultz – XV. The Deaths of Birds

Jeffrey Schultz

XV. The Deaths of Birds

for C. G. Hanzlicek

When the realm
Of the image
Yields nothing more
Than gore and the unendurable,
And when then thereafter gore
And the unendurable,
Themselves become
So commonplace
They can no longer
Be unendurable
Or elicit the horror
Appropriate to them,
What at all could hope
To be seen,
To really be seen
As what it is?
I could show
A thousand things
But what could speak
To the matter at hand?
So much, all come
To something
So small as disappointment…
There’s something cruel and vague
About it, and it’s looking to be
The primary thing.
It listens to our calls
And learns to imitate them,
Its sound so like ours.
It flashes like life in the light.
It’s what’s there
For sense to sense.

Jeffrey Schultz’s artist statement:

Title of series: Fifteen Variations on Themes from Levis.
In a series of fifteen brief variations, Schultz will meditate on a number of themes–some of them poorly recalled from memory, some of them badly obscured or poorly understood–from Levis’s work.

Marisol Baca – in eights // octaves

Marisol Baca

in eights // octaves

At the author’s request, this poem has been temporarily removed. It will return to the site in the future.

Marisol Baca’s artist statement: