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
Emergency responders
Bomb explodes
Press the tortilla to cheese
shake sediments from bottle
of Tapatio, open quesadilla
sprinkle red drops of fire
smell of corn permeates the kitchen
Dead civilians
3-month- old girl in father’s arms
Wailing and crying
Scoop the quesadilla onto the plate
add sliced fuji apple, half avocado
with salt crystals
clear table of notebooks & pencils
sit by the window to gaze at orange tree
Human damage
Ballistic recovery
Mother sobs nurses child
How to be witness? bite & chew
finish lunch, shake my thoughts
tomorrow will be the same
again
Volunteers bring water for toilets
Children play in ruins
Hospital flattened
Place my used plate in the sink
the fixings go back in the refrigerator
go outside to water
my aloe vera
From Flagstaff to Bakersfield on Hwy 40
Today a falcon flies over Old Woman Mountain way.
Words bump around in my head.
Crunching ice, gulping soda, I listen
to bits of an audio book, I toss a waxy cup
into the backseat. Heat reverberates,
mangled tin trailers and flimsy fences dot a dry ocean,
the ancients murmur in this expanse. Women crossed
sandy brown desert in covered wagons, their courage, stubborn.
There was never enough water or shade.
I drive full speed to cross the border
into California. Here my body is dry.
I search for signs of water, a tower, green limbs
from creosote bushes. Dust knows how to travel in wind.
Janette Jameson
Janette Jameson has lived in the Central Valley for the last thirty years. She grew up in Torreón, Coahuila, Mexico where she learned to navigate between two cultures. Even today, she adds in English and multiplies in Spanish. She is a retired social worker who specialized in working with children through play therapy and implemented an infant mental health program for Stanislaus County. As in play therapy, she strives to bring words to complex or incongruent experiences of life. She is a member of the Modesto Stanislaus Poetry Center Board. Janette has published in the Song of The San Joaquin, a poetry magazine for the San Joaquin Valley and in Penumbra, a literary journal from Stanislaus State University. She has also published in the City of Modesto and Poets Corner. She engages in numerous open mic occasions in Modesto.