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ALMA LUZ VILLANUEVA

Alma Luz Villanueva's webpage can be viewed at:

www.almaluzvillanueva.com

MYSTERY

I am wearing my Yaqui, Spanish,

English and German skin today-

my gringa-eyes are hazel, my vision

Yaqui, my thick dark hair Spanish,

my freckles English,

my lanky structure German,

my body human, human

from this planet, Earth-

I am a spirit, a soul

in drag, at home in this

galaxy, at home on our Earth-

I put clothes on me, I decorate

this human body, a female one

that housed four human young-

I decorate with joy and pleasure, as

the galaxy is decorated wtih its

Mystery.

            *         *        *

Why does a banana wear

yellow?

Why does an apple wear

red?

Why does a cat wear

fur?

Why does a bird wear

feathers?

Why does the sky wear

stars?

Why does the moon wear

light?

Why does the sun wear

warmth?

Why does the Earth wear

oxygen?

Why do we wear human

skin?

Why is skin valued beyond the

soul?

Why is the soul so

patient?

Why is the soul so

impatient

waiting, always waiting for

our return to the innocence of

wisdom,

when we came from the

Mystery

in the first decoration

body

temporary

home

    §                   

Southern California poet MJ Warrender is a graduate of the Antioch University LA MFA program.

Christmas Eve

Alone,

twenty-five miles outside Albuquerque

on the road to Santa Fe

where I was to meet some people

I had never met before.

The luminarias twinkled

in the outskirts

of the city I had just left,

leaving a lingering feeling

of romance, repose.

I pulled into an old filling station

that opened the landscape

like a lantern

amidst a vast, dark ocean.

I could not get the cap off

that stiff and bleak automatic—

everything had buttons to make it go—

and you appeared

from nowhere

in your blue pick-up truck.

You smiled and took over;

your ponytail, blue eyes, blue jeans

and blue smile made me feel

as if I should let you,

and we talked of the steam locomotive

that trails through neighboring mountains,

of the luminarias that are only lit

this time of year,

of the possibility of gnomes in

the surrounding wooded areas.

Then the bleak automatic filled,

you capped it slowly, thoughtfully,

turned, facing behind me, alongside me

and whispered marry me

please marry me

and in my surprise and shyness

I said nothing

and watched you drive away.

-MJ Warrender

Bonnie Bolling lives in Long Beach with her family.  She is an editor of Verdad, a literary and art web magazine.  She is the winner of the Donald Drury Award for both fiction and poetry.  Her work has been published in Pearl Magazine, and other magazines and newspapers.  Her current projects are a novel, entitled Doubting Tomas, and a collection of poetry.  She is a student of the creative writing program at Long Beach City College and is working with award winning poet and novelist, Frank X. Gaspar.  When she isn't writing poems or re-writing her novel, she enjoys conversations with her sons, sipping wine and window shopping with her sisters.

Sweet Sixteen


The rain poured down every day that summer
We had to lay sand bags outside the door
The river swelled, overflowed with water
and then seeped through wallcracks in the kitchen
My grandmother prayed and begged that Jesus
Bless our soaked, heathen selves with the sun's kiss.

I liked the rain, the drops soft like a kiss
spreading a coat of quiet all summer
Grandmother reading the words of Jesus
while the planet was cleansed outside the door
and cooking smells wafted in the kitchen
my only chore, the tea-boiling water.

I had never seen so much brown water,
I heard the earth gurgle, suck like a kiss.
I read books and stayed dry in the kitchen
Dreaming indoors everyday that summer
Staring a hole in the back of the door
Grandmother prayed with her heart to Jesus.

I ignored her stories about Jesus
except the tale when he walks on water
and thinking I heard him knock on the door
I opened it just to blow him a kiss.
It wasn't him in the rain that summer
Beyond the damp screen door to the kitchen.

Rain doesn't belong inside the kitchen.
Someone had knocked but it wasn't Jesus.
I'll never forget the rain that summer,
The sight of earthworms wiggling in water
He smelled like earth when he gave me a kiss
We slept in the rain, rain tapped on the door.

How could I know he would knock on that door?
I turned sixteen in grandmother's kitchen,
My lips weren't expecting a birthday kiss.
Maybe I should pray each day to Jesus-
as girls need boys who can walk on water
when it rains hard each day in the summer.

All I did was open the door-sweet Jesus!
Poor grandmother, her kitchen flooded with water
and my kiss, only the first, and then that long wet summer.



               Bonnie Bolling

Pray For Me, Father

Sherwood Ross, a multitalented freelance journalist provided the following song.

© by Sherwood Ross

Em

Pray for me, Father, mine is the sin of cowardice

For I do not set myself on fire at the White House gate

C G

To protest this war. I am a glutton for God’s blue sky.

Em

Pray for me, Father, for my taxes set a banquet for Death

With napalm and daisy cutters and snakelike missiles

C G

To blow apart other men, their wives and children

Em G

While I walk secure along the shore of the tranquil sea.

C G

Pray for me, Father, and I will pray for you

Em

Pray for a church that does not decry an Inquisition

Where men are broken and driven mad in the dungeons

G

Of Bagram, Kabul, Gitmo, and Abu Ghraib

A church of priests who speak of Golgotha

C

As if Jesus and Jesus and Jesus by the thousands

G

Are not being crucified now by the Masters of War

Em

Are not walking home on artificial legs

Are not staring sightless from wheelchairs

In VA hospitals into God’s blue sky.

C Em

Pray for me, Father, and I will pray for you.

The Chickasaw Plum - Volume III - Number 12 - December 2006

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