Your Gold-Country Adventure

Welcome! We’re looking forward to your stay at Doomtown Manor, California’s Most Haunted Guest House! Your itinerary for six (6) guests is listed at the bottom of this email. We have received your deposit and the notarized liability waivers, and you have accepted our Terms and Conditions.  Located in Northern California’s fabled Gold Country, the village of Doomtown offers nature hikes, river rafting, llama wrangling, panning for gold and Roadshow-quality antiquing. From the old mines to the historic Chinese cemetery, the town drips California history. The jewel in the village’s crown is Doomtown Manor, built… Read More »Your Gold-Country Adventure

Two Poems

Voice Lesson 1.I heard the teacher tell you—Vowels are the sounds that sing.Consonants can’t.When you click lips closed,your tongue and teeth cut sounds into chunks—A-E-I-O-U open into song—long tones in the throat.Lungs push a shout into your mouthand out into the airto take flight.Consonants cannot cry. 2.At your birth,I opened my throat,and soundloosened my womb.The tune of the body,something knownbefore words,resonated in my mouth—not the brain, sharing sensationnot sense, nor nonsense—an ancient, certain groan.  3.Last night we made lungsout of pink bubble wrap.Inside each flapping lobeyou drew blue-branchedveins and vined arteries,taped trachea and diaphragm.You say you want… Read More »Two Poems

Two Poems

Lunch with News  Flip white corn tortilla con queso in cast iron grill coiled heat melts grated mozzarella tortilla becomes soft inside and crispy doradito on top                                                                         Most of the weather clears                                                                … Read More »Two Poems

To my sixteen-year-old self 

It won’t be easyI whisper vocal nodes sorefrom internal howling no fences aroundthe solar system of your imagination It will take timeI bellow from the mountain ridgeextract the reticence from your voice like spaniel teeth to hareincisive yet softdo no harm I sing to remind you where you came fromcarry you to the attic of your heartjust a girl, a box of tunes and an entire summer           these days, to-do lists override summer           hold me hostage            tone in its bullet points This poem words held gently… Read More »To my sixteen-year-old self 

Imagine you’re a tree for a minute and

For my brother John               you know centuries of the world                                                                             in that the world is your people                                     and your people love                                                                             to grow with you                                               like how we live                                                                            centuries longer in a forest         … Read More »Imagine you’re a tree for a minute and

Road

You know this and almost no one else knows this: but an almond croissant is just a twice baked one, a day old one, at most places anyway, and it’s magic how a sad, stale croissant transforms into a new treat with a delightful cookie-like crust. The barista making your coffee warns you beforehand, so as not to disappoint, that the almond croissant here is not just almond but also has a swipe of orange marmalade and not just almond paste and would you still want that, you said, resoundingly, 1000% more intrigued, yes, and… Read More »Road

Remothering

Kestra hasn’t read Freud, but she trusts him when he says that everything is the mother’s fault. It was a validating truism for her twenties, and a constructive aspiration in her young thirties. Lately, though, as a mantra, it’s become less motivating. More terrifying. But all that inverts today. Because today, Kestra is going to buy a new mother. She’s taken the day off work. She’s arrayed her pillows. She is primed, ready. But, even so, when her cracked mobile phone rings shrill as a starling, a rip of adrenaline ices her over.  She fumbles… Read More »Remothering

Two Poems

These Maps Are Ghosts  Maps give us a single dimensionfrom the eye of the victor.  History guided the cartographer’s hand:millions massacred— meant a line carved farther south, farther west in the name of Accomplishment. The flattened depiction does not show the deep graves—or the families turned into sun-baked mounds deprived of a bare minimum of dignity. At a quick glance, those lines and labels appear reasonable, justified through centuries of silence.  Move closer, put your face right up to the creased paper so you can catch the stomach-souring scent of decay. Rivers of dried tears mixed with spilled blood. Trace your hands across  the grooves, shading, and pen points. The truths buried… Read More »Two Poems

Three Poems

I LOVE THE WAY YOU WALK after Eileen Pettycrew Especially on the mountainside in the rain,Straw hat tipped over eyebrows dark and slanting,Your legs, long-boned and lean, stepping Without hesitation over cracks and crumbling earth. How you never pause at the fork in the trail, confidentEven as the atmospheric river tries to drown us.I watch you and my heart is a purple lampranthus,Bursting open under the sun. It doesn’t matter If deer are running for cover, splashing our legs With mud as they stream by, close enough to touch. Let us tip our faces to the storm gods, let the… Read More »Three Poems

Magnolia

Modesto, California, 1976 Magnolia Mendoza couldn’t catch sleep. She didn’t even try to chase it. It was pointless. Sleep was always a few steps out of her reach. Still, her teacher, Mr. Lynch, had told her more than once, especially when he caught her resting her head on her desk, that she needed to “catch some shut-eye.” From her bed, Magnolia could see the iron arrows on the wood clock above the kitchen sink. The short one pointed to the number two. She had four hours before she had to get up for school, but… Read More »Magnolia