frida got mad at a dove today, had to dig a hole about it
in the shade of a gambel oak my mom believes is an elm.
i don’t know how to convince her i know anything at all,
i show her acorns. she tells me how at nine years old
she worked her father’s fruit stand, slinging mangos
in a part of l.a. you can get an egg sandwich these days
for seventeen bucks. the dove sat on a stone wall
my dad had fixed when a ford plowed through it.
i don’t really care if it’s an elm or an oak,
i don’t really care that i’m right. what i want
is my mother to have been a child unburdened
by the backbreaking weight of a thousand melons.
what i want is to lie down in the hole frida dug
when a bird of peace perched on the rebuilt ruins
of near disaster & watch the clouds change overhead,
say look, it’s a mango & the mango bursts loose
& buries a girl-shaped seed in the hole
a small dog dug & the girl becomes a dogwood.
Kristin Lueke
Kristin Lueke is a Chicana poet and author of the chapbooks (in)different math (Dancing Girl Press) and here i show you a human heart. Her work has appeared in Sixth Finch, Wildness, HAD, Okay Donkey, and Always Crashing, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best New Poets, Best of the Net. She writes at www.theanimaleats.com.
