By Lizeth De La Luz
Desahogar
Give me language that can inhabit dreams
To sway within feeling and wonder and make hues of light and rays and sky and foundations of growth
Allow me to fall into the greys and blues and golden horizons – to jolt between el hogar para desahogar
And to unwind, to forgive body and tongue, to release it from constraints
To release it from the overcast of un país extranjero
To release into fragments of memory and sensation – a space that no longer exists
Let the urge to scream / Drown out the fight in you / To rest again before you wake up
A Mother’s Plea
When does the prospective space of me and perception stop hurting? When can I feel that we can exist without insidious eyes burning our hands? I’ve been promised eternal peace after each degree, a CV crafted as long as a slumber, heavy debt as collateral, tell me what I need to do to keep my family safe. To stop the forced calm in my body, to extinguish nervous tears, to control the anxious breaths as we merely exist in public, pass by emergency responders, when will we stop being just bodies. When can we finish a conversation, when can we ask for directions, when can we make it home.
Lizeth De La Luz is a poet, writer, editor and educator from California. She holds a Creative Writing degree from Chapman University and is pursuing an MFA degree at San Francisco State University. She writes about the frustration of language barriers, learned barriers, anxieties of living/loving/grieving in a Mexican body in the United States. She is the Senior Field Notes Editor at Defunkt magazine. Her work can be found in City Works, Short Vine, Calliope, and Transfer magazine.