Poetry
Photo by Vitaliy Shevchenko on Unsplash
The Enigmatic Life of Clara Sandoval
My aunt had a dear friend named Clara Sandoval
But my mother did not approve of her at all.
One day when we were alone, momma said:
“I do not like that Clara Sandoval.”
She added “and I don’t want you to trust her either
No matter how much chocolate she brings you.”
I nodded, but her gifts were exquisitely infused
With the heretofore unimaginable taste of exotic fruit
And such delights were unavailable in our rather tame suburban town.
Indeed, the sweets made me want to love Clara Sandoval too.
After all my auntie called her “my dear Clara”
And looked forward to her visit each year—
She came by ocean liner and train, dressed like a silent film star,
Wearing a fur stole in late spring!
Upon arrival, Clara and my aunt embraced
They whispered. They giggled. They sobbed. They embraced again.
O the gifts she would bring my aunt and my mother.
Daring dresses. Dazzling scarves. Darling brooches.
My aunt oohed at the garments and jewelry
But my mother scowled and took them to the secondhand store.
She’d say, “please take this junk from me immediately.”
Nevertheless, I invented stories about Clara Sandoval
And her ineffable life in the country from which my family was exiled.
Her parents. Her lovers. Her residences.
Her unlikely sources of income.
One day my mother caught me pondering Clara Sandoval.
Momma said: “I know you are imagining Clara Sandoval’s life.”
She added: “And I want you to stop it right now.
No good will ever come from providing mystery to her rather typical story.
She is a traitor, pure and simple. She was no spy for the cause of freedom.
She was an informant for the regime. And I, unlike your aunt, will never forgive her.”
I begged my mother for details,
As I could tell hers was a heartfelt accusation.
Momma replied: “In time, my dear son. In time.”
She added: “You must learn what it means to be a partisan,
A real fighter for freedom.”
When I was eighteen, Clara Sandoval didn’t make it for her yearly visit.
On the day of her arrival,
My auntie received a telegram via Western Union from a relative of “dear Clara.”
She froze as she read it, and the paper fell to the floor.
I picked it up:
“Clara has been murdered STOP No known reason STOP
More later STOP Sending love”
My mother consoled me in a hug that I hadn’t received in years,
But I could tell she was not surprised by the news.
My aunt wept for days
And dressed extravagantly like her late dear friend
In the garments she had been given.
As for me, even today
I imagine the enigmatic life and death of the traitorous Clara Sandoval.
The Regime
Yesterday, Lydia, I hiked
To see if I could get beyond
The reach of the regime…
I dashed past a phalanx of mosquitoes.
I tiptoed around a troop of napping coy-wolves.
And as I bushwacked through the woods I bellowed,
And as I crossed an informing brook, I ridiculed it.
And as I climbed an impossible incline, I invested in my own echo.
But was I free?
And how to measure liberty Lydia?
Is it only all or nothing?
Surely, I was still reacting, not yet spontaneous, not yet uncoerced.
I arrived at a sit-in of wildflowers chanting as one in the meadow.
Surely the blooms escaped the fear of police and government agents.
Perhaps they were unfettered, but instead I wondered:
Didn’t they droop like me in their sleep, alone, unable to find comfort?
And Lydia, there I was, ostensibly unbound,
But looking for drones above me
And secretly installed cameras about me.
Who knew that slogans alone do not purge the regime?
Or instinctive subversion? Or calculated transgression?
No matter what, I continued to swallow the regime’s duplicity
Or it had been injected into me
And it was a cyst inflaming my skin.
The regime reeks in my backpacker’s knapsack.
Who knew that at night,
Dreams are taken into custody
And upon waking
Nightmares invade the day?
But now I know, Lydia. Now I know. And so do you.
No matter what, no more detours, no more dawdling.
Tanka Number Three
This song passed the test
And now it yearns for voices
The past is truant
The present is but hearsay
Tomorrow’s song will resound