Christopher David Rosales: Abuelita Planting Jars at Base in Rattling Cane

Poetry by Christopher David Rosales
[ABUELITA PLANTING JARS AT BASE IN RATTLING CANE,]

Abuelita planting jars at base in rattling cane,
whisking lilies,

to allude your curve. A pedal in rotation only hints,
spoked light, foot flat in utterance, shoestring.

To you they give their flavors
shelled by heat and stride
shorter lover with proud armdrape of a stole.

In the book is a sticker. We’ve all been
Loved from slant streets that led them
To us. What brings the sugar-cane ripening in the sun?

Intoxication, a new sharpness,
a care for attachment
I’ve never let go of punching—

the cane bow blown wide
for plucking fragments and sprung threads.
Singing is braiding with light

the feeling of time in the lips—
The meniscus in the glass jar higher than its edges.
Abuelita said the jars in gardens

scare away cats and spirits,
eyes widened by water.

Christopher David Rosales is from Paramount, Los Angeles, California. He is the author of Word Is Bone (2019, Broken River Books), winner of the International Latino Book Award. His short stories have appeared in Both Sides: An Anthology of Border Noir (2020, Polis/Agora Books), among other anthologies, journals, and magazines in the U.S. and abroad. Most recently, Rosales’ writing workshops fostered essays by Dreamers, which he collected and co-edited in An Anthology of Dreams from an Impossible Journey, winning those Dreamers an International Latino Book Award 2023.