By Priscilla Daniels-Mark
Cherry Season My Mama and Daddy drove North with my sister and I To Washington In a rusty red colored Chevy station wagon Listening to crystal blue persuasion Over and over New tires then The engine checked A map in the glove compartment with my Daddy’s black oil prints on it An address of a cherry farm in Washington that my Mother gripped the whole way Using it as a fan when it got hot Folding it a hundred different ways when she got bored My little sister and I in the back seat drinking thick carnation milk that came from a can I preferred my Mama’s breast milk from what she said When we landed in the green landscape We didn’t have time to settle in Or money to get nostalgic Rain a blessing It made music rip tapping against the metal of the hood It was the last thing we heard before we fell asleep sleep in our cocoon With the smell of sweat sifting away from the days labor Sweet baby dreams sometimes Other nights awoken by a creek in the neck Nothing that some midnight mota couldn’t help Mama and Daddy smoked on the hood of the car on clear nights Watching for the stars that moved between the trees Waiting until those lights disappeared They never expected so much rain And they opened their mouths to catch it when they got thirsty And bottled it in jugs. My mama recalled standing on a wooden orchard ladder The kind that has three legs A deer sniffed at her shoes While she held me in her arms Breastfeeding me While she baby talked the deer Letting it lick her fingers Cherry juice flowing through all of our veins
Priscilla Daniels-Mark is a visual artist, writer, and full time student in Portland, Oregon. She was originally born in San Diego, California and lived much of her life in Northern California. Priscilla is also married with one daughter, who is currently in College.
She calls herself a “melting pot of heritages” having Mexican, African, Native, Spanish and other European roots.
Writing and art have stayed with her since she was a child. “These are always things that I knew that I could turn to as a child and throughout my life regardless of what was happening in my environment in which I lived or the outside World.” She has recently self-published “Hungry,” a chap book of poetry about the pandemic. In addition, she is currently working on a new series of visual art pieces inspired by her recent ancestral discoveries.