is a poet, writer, and photographer living on Whidbey Island, Washington. The winner of several national awards, including the Hackney Prize, she has been published extensively both in the U.S. and her native Argentina. Her poem “An Artifact of Light” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2004 soon after it appeared in her first chapbook, The Farthest South, published by New American Press in 2003.
Sample Work
As a child, they could not keep me from wells.
— Seamus Heaney
They were my everyday oceans,
the rain pools on the pavement, brooks
maimed by flash floods;
the dual nature of things,
creating borders,
a fickle world of soil,
of sheen and moisture.
They could not keep me from wells:
always bursting with the voices of water,
with simple wooden figures,
the clusters of young grapes,
a troupe of strutting peacocks
jumping over the moon.
And the secret tales of ships and souls
wedged into invisible cracks,
like the necks of bottles
long, long broken.
PLAZA DE MAYO, BUENOS AIRES
Thursday, 3.30pm
Crossing the avenue slowly
in knots of threes and fours,
they whip out the white embroidered
head scarves from battered bags,
tying them under the soft chins,
and they move to the obelisk that celebrates
some freedom, where others await
to peck their cheeks, ask after a troubled relative
or their own rheumy legs in support
hose. They have begun
their round of steps, marching
on cheap shapeless shoes.
Out of nowhere, there are placards in the hands
that had been washing lunch dishes
two hours ago. The faces on the placards
show the hairdos and long sideburns
that raged more than twenty years ago.
The city circles the Plaza with a flood
of traffic and a few weary cops.
The mothers' pace is nothing
like the passersbys'. Weighted down
by their Gustavos, all the Pablos,
the Claudias, Julios and Elsitas,
the slews of María del Carmenes,
they move in cadences of pain and years
flayed raw by menopause and absence.
The hidden ones that still keep
eyes on them smirk there's fewer
every Thursday—age and the erosions
of grief doing the dirty work, removing
them from view, unsightly madwomen
who haven't learned about moving on.
A breath before rush hour
they unchain their arms, the kerchiefs
and the placards disappear,
they join the lines for the buses
and the underground, once again simply
women from the barrios come downtown,
returning home where the old man has
remembered to water the ferns and start
a pot of white rice for tonight.
Home to take a load off, watch the evening
news that never name them anymore,
the obstinate madwomen
who move on
and on until they
catch up with themselves, around
the obelisk that celebrates some freedom,
corpseless, unsilent, feet aching.
MY MOTHER'S FAITH
Before she goes to sleep
she covers us all
with her warm blanket of saints—
Gaetan for steady work,
Jude for the impossible,
Martin of Porres I forget why
except she and I like to sweep
and so does Martin, smile beaming
from his brown face on the card,
hands holding
a straw broom for eternity.
She calls on
Our Ladies of Everywhere,
of every place the busy Mary
has ever been known
to appear—
another woman stuck to a million chores
for a family as scattered
as the stars.
My mother knows reams of saints
to be, beatified obscure
souls, saints in training.
She loves them all,
with an unquestioning democracy
of belief, walking into
every darkened church
to gasp delighted
at the plaster figures staring blank
into the holy air,
greeting them like kin.
If saints can blush, these surely do,
pleased and embarrassed
at such gentle relish.
They can't help but bestow
miracles upon her, which she takes home,
these marvels soft and round
like plump birds, simple
uncomplicated miracles
she passes on to all of us,
who have forgotten how to pray.
