As the Holidays Approach--"How To Be Alone in Love"

As the holidays approach, I know many people will find all the loud, happy preparations and boisterous reminders difficult to bear because they will be missing someone they love because of breakups, divorce, family estrangements, deaths, or simply long distances combined with lack of money and/or time to travel. In addition, the holidays can be especially difficult for people who suffer from depression, even when they are surrounded by other people.

So for all too many people, these holidays of togetherness and joyous family get-togethers can be extremely lonely. Some people have told me they have found relief and comfort in one particular poem while at their lowest emotional states (in two cases, suicidal), so I'm posting that poem here today for everyone who's facing some sense of loss or loneliness as we approach Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, or Yule.

NOTE: If you are depressed or have feelings or thoughts of harming yourself, please seek help. You can always call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

HOW TO BE ALONE IN LOVE

Hold fast, first.

Continue to give,

even when no one wants

what you offer. The power, the wonder

is in the giving.

Call yourself out of yourself,

shedding old skins.

Stripping bare to organ and bone,

open the heart’s vein

and give your blood. Commit

and continue to commit.

These choices are always yours.

Be love’s fool.

Become God’s.

He will understand.

He too loved immoderately.

Published in Heart's Migration (Tia Chucha Press, 2009)

A Poem for Native American Heritage Month--"Grandmother's Basket"

For Native American Heritage Month, here is a poem about my grandmother, who was so influential in my life, even though she died when I was thirteen. Like a lot of families, mine was torn apart by divorce when I was young, and as great as the loss of my father was, I think the loss of his family, my grandmother and aunt, was even more traumatic. These women had been the strong stable base of my childhood while both parents were chaotic children. Once the divorce occurred, I lost that stability and their wisdom, but never their love. Fortunately, as an adult, I could and did seek out my aunt while she was still alive and rebuilt the family connection. Unfortunately, my grandmother was long gone by then.

GRANDMOTHER’S BASKET

I loved Grandmother’s baskets when I was small.

They had intricate patterns and figures

woven into them in brown, black,

yellow, red, and orange.

She had different sizes and shapes,

used them for storage rather than display.

My favorite was in reds and yellows with a black border.

It looked to me as if woven of fire and grasses.

I would climb into cupboards, find one,

and ask why she didn’t keep it out on a tabletop

where everyone who came in could admire it.

“These aren’t the best ones,” she said

as she fingered baskets that looked beautiful to me.

“We used to make them from rivercane,

which makes a better basket and dyes the best,

but they rounded us up in concentration camps

and drove us on a death march to a new land

that didn’t have our old plants like rivercane

so now we use buckbrush and honeysuckle.”

Grandmother shrugged. “You make do.”

I asked her to teach me how to make a basket

like the one I loved with feathers of fire

along its steep sides. She shook her head.

“It’s a lot of hard work.

First, we need black walnut, blood root,

pokeweed, elderberry. Yellow root’s the best yellow,

but blood root will have to do.

They’ve dug all the yellow root

for rich people’s medicines, call it goldenseal.

Got to have our dyestuffs first.

Got to forage for most of them.

It takes lots of trips, out and back,

to get enough to make good colors.”

I knew I could do that and said so.

She laughed. “You’ve got to know what to pick

or dig or gather. It’s like with my medicines.

Can’t just go taking any old weed.”

I pointed out that I was learning from her

about the Cherokee medicine plants. She just shook her head.

“It’s not the same. I grow most of those.

Haven’t taken you out for the wild ones yet

because you’re too little still. Same for dye plants.”

I nagged at her for days, begging her to teach me

so I could have a basket of my own.

I had in mind that amazing fire-flickering basket.

I wanted to make one just like that.

My visit was over without her ever giving in.

I was used to Grandmother’s strength of will.

I knew I would have to try harder next time.

There was no next-time visit.

My mother had always hated her mother-in-law.

Now, she won the battle to keep us away.

Our relationship poured out in letters

until my mother destroyed them,

refused further correspondence.

Years later, Grandmother wrote me—

a letter that slipped past my mother’s scrutiny—

that she was making a basket

one last time for me.

I knew she was very ill,

soon to die.

I don’t know who got the beautiful baskets

when Grandmother died, especially the one

that I loved when I was small.

Her sister and niece who cared for her

in her last illness, I suppose.

That’s fair. My parents had divorced by then,

and my mother allowed no contact

with that family. But

a lumpy, brown-paper-bag-wrapped package

with Grandmother’s shaky, spidery handwriting

arrived for me after her death.

My mother opened it first and laughed.

I stood waiting eagerly to snatch up

the last thing my grandmother would ever give me.

“Look at that,” Mother said with more laughter.

“That ugly old thing’s supposed to be a basket,

I think. She sure lost her knack for that

at the end, didn’t she?”

When I was small and visiting, I knew

Grandmother already had arthritis

in her hands. That’s probably why

she wouldn’t teach me to make baskets—

because she didn’t have the dexterity any longer

to make the kind she once had.

I still have that simple handled basket

of vines (probably honeysuckle).

The whole thing is dyed black.

There are no intricate patterns of flames

or anything else. It’s just solid black.

I can see her plodding out to gather

butternuts for the black dye

and to pull the honeysuckle vines,

stripping off the leaves.

I can see her gnarled hands

painstakingly weaving under and over,

no fancy twills or double-woven sides.

Hard enough to shape

a shallow but sturdy gathering basket

for her long-unseen granddaughter.

All these years later

I have my own herb garden

where many of her medicine plants grow.

When I gather them to dry for teas and poultices,

I use that black vine basket.

I think it will last forever.

Published in Dark Sister (Mammoth Publications,, forthcoming)

To a Young Native Artist

I had great news yesterday. My next book of poetry, DARK SISTER, which is dear to my heart but languished unsubmitted while I learned how to navigate the new world of commercial mystery fiction and then the bizarre landscape of cancer treatments, will be published in 2018. 

Unfortunately, though, something happened that took the edge off that joy. For the third time in recent months, a gifted Native woman writer who had been achieving wonderful success was attacked from within the Native community over identity issues. Identity is a fraught issue in the Native community, but the crazy thing in each of these cases was that these women are all documented citizens of their respective (and different) nations.

We're all too used to having mainstream American society, especially publishing, tell us Native writers that we're not “Indian enough,” because we don't/won't write in the tropes and stereotypes they expect or think the readers expect from Native writers, because we “don't look Native” to their eyes (not like Iron Eyes Cody's great masquerade), because we live in urban areas rather than on reservations (ignoring the fact that over 70% of Natives live in urban areas—in large part due to US government policies of the mid-20th century). There's a special sting, though, when it comes from our own community.

Success as a Native writer is not a zero-sum game. When one of us achieves success, that opens eyes and doors for more of us. We're surrounded by a mainstream literary community with a few staunch allies, a lot of often destructive ignorance about us, and a surprising number of people with knives out when it comes to us and our writing and needs. We shouldn't be carving up our own and tossing bloody pieces out to appease them. We should be celebrating and lifting up our own writers who attain success and supporting each other as we all work toward greater things for each of us individually and our community as a whole.

A few weeks ago, I wrote this poem and posted it on Facebook, and I think it's relevant to this discussion.

To a Young Native Artist

How many people made love, or just had sex, and survived,
often under bleakest circumstances,
to create your unique spirit and body.
How many women gave birth, suckled,
and nurtured babes in violence and in injury and illness,
hoping for a future they would never see.
Every one of us born is a victory
against colonialism and attempted genocide.
You are the culmination of all those who loved
in the midst of hate. You are the resistance.
You are hope made flesh.
Never let this society dictate what you create.
Your ancestors have given you gifts. Use them.

Poems for Dias de los Muertos (Days of the Dead)

Today is the first day of  Dias de los Muertos (Days of the Dead) in Mexico and among Mexican Americans. Contrary to what most Americans seem to think of it, Dias de los Muertos is not a zany, drunken extension of Halloween. It's more of a family party to honor the spirits of deceased loved ones. In Mexico, many families visit the cemeteries where their loved ones are interred to decorate the graves for a party and eat and drink with their dead, who have plates prepared for them, as well. It has more in common with the older American customs around Memorial Day than Halloween.

Much like Samhain, the Celtic feast day that lies forgotten at the roots of America's Halloween, Dias de los Muertos are two days when the veils between the worlds of the living and the dead thin to the point of allowing communion with dead loved ones. Calacas and catrionas, the skeleton figures that are dressed up and posed, often in zany situations called calaveras, are a way of paying respect to Death without fearing or giving Death undue power over the living.

So, in honor of Dias de los Muertos, today and tomorrow, here are two very different poems.

CALACA COMEDY CENTRAL

In this time of marigolds and mariposas,

calacas, calaveras, and candles everywhere,

in this time when the veil between the worlds,

living and dead, is stretched thinnest,

watch the souls streaming through the tears,

trailing that unnatural chill of Lord Death’s land.

Here he comes himself, skeleton jester,

with crown and scepter to beg

for the taste of mescal y pan muerto.

Dress him up for photos,

Lord Death just bares his teeth

in an everlasting grin and dances,

loose-limbed and clacking, bone on bone,

holding out his sombrero at the end

as he mimics a hacendado’s formal bow.

Who knew he was such a comedian?

All our legends tell a different story,

scary and grim, not this grinning,

fingerbone-snapping prankster.

Who knew he could be so funny,

prancing around in silly costumes,

telling knock, knock jokes,

juggling sugar skulls,

striking ridiculous poses?

Be generous to that hat he passes

when his performance is finished.

No small change or paper bills.

This bony clown performs for one pay only,

a taste of what we take for granted

every day, a mouthful of mole,

a kiss, a look at the sunlight,

a breath of air like sweet wine,

one heartbeat rubbing up against another.

Once a year,

he comes to remind us

that life is a slapstick farce,

and his skeletal leer

is the ultimate punchline.

Published in Present Magazine

This second poem arose from a challenge given to me by a fellow member of The Latino Writers Collective--to write a passionate love poem for Dias de los Muertos.

OFRENDA

This is the altar I’m building

to my calaverada,

that madcap dance of death

my heart tangoed with you.

Boxes stacked and covered with fabric

to make a place of power

to draw you back to me.

A calavera of great artistry

will stand in for you, mimicking life

almost as well as you mimicked love.

I will bake you pan de muerto and rosquete,

still trying to please you,

buy finest bourbon, your favorite,

no mezcal or tequila for you,

place it next to the water, salt, and bread.

Mustn’t forget the mirror and comb

so you can check your hair

of which you were always so vain.

I will slice my fingers cutting

papel picado skulls and hearts,

yellow, orange, pink and white,

and purple for pain,

to decorate the velvet of the altar.

I adorn the ofrenda and myself

with bright, guilt-swallowing marigolds,

chaining them through my hair,

string their petals across the ground

to lead you back. Let me light the copal

and inhale the sweet smoke,

trying to attract you even now,

drawing you to me. Mustn’t cry, though.

“The path back to the living world

must not be made slippery by tears.”

It will all be to no avail.

I can’t fool you or anyone

into thinking I have finally found acceptance.

It’s all too clear I would wrestle

the Lady of the Dead herself

for possession, to wrench you

from peaceful rest in Mictlan

and back into the tempest

that was us.

Published in Present Magazine

Birthday Poem for Breast Cancer Awareness Month--:Coming Around Again"

On my first post-cancer-treatment birthday, I am celebrating and making plans for the rest of my life with a renewed dedication to living as a creative artist.

COMING AROUND AGAIN

Three years ago—three years of poison and desperate

positive thinking—they cut off my breast,

carving out the lymph nodes

of the underarm as well.

They left me with an ugly, puckered scar

14 inches long and 3 inches wide,

raised one-half to one inch high

along its length, and another

incision 3 inches below that scar

where a length of tubing inserted

into the chest drained

blood and lymph into an attached bag

for 3 ½ pain-filled, sleepless weeks.

Death has come looking for me before this

several times. I have always tricked her

into leaving me to my life a little longer,

Scheherazade putting the random scenes

of daily living into dramatic narrative,

heightening conflict and tension,

generating suspense, embellishing

dull parts to create more spark and excitement,

adding touches of humor to lighten the mood,

a story playing out in front of her

to which she needs to know the ending

before she brings down the final curtain.

I’ve grown familiar with Death’s face,

can read it to tell if I need to spice up the story

because she’s losing interest. Old friend

and familiar, she bears no horror for me any longer.

I have seen the long view through her eyes,

the sacred labyrinth of galaxies

spinning out of control throughout the universe

pulling apart in spiral motion, eternal

dissipation of energy rippling outward

with magic like the violent change brought

by tropical storm clouds seen from the air,

galactic snake coiling around stars and planets

and black holes whirling like water

down a drain, sucking all matter and energy

within reach, voracious maws, widdershins,

sunwise, ears of creation cocked

for the song, symphony, story, vining

through the nebulae, gathering tension

and force, the vast’s giant spring pulled taut,

ready to snap back into the kaleidoscope,

force of tornadoes, whirlwinds,

passing into the still eye surrounded

by the stomp dance of the stars,

Creator’s medicine wheel, coming,

going, bringing, leaving, giving, taking,

moving up and down around the spiral

of time, infinity’s tilt-a-whirl.

Remaining attached to this life, these loved people,

I have no wish to join the stardust spiral dance

of destruction and creation before I must.

I’ll stay here in this incarnation as long as I can,

loving this insane world’s dark and light moments

and the people, trees, birds around me, clinging

until the last to its chiaroscuro, yin and yang.

Still, I won’t fall screaming into the void

when my time is up. I’ve seen the wheel of fortune

that is the cosmos. Life is circular, grinding all of us

into crumbs of creation, raw material for new wonders.

I’ve promised myself and lovely bony Ms. Death

I will embrace my ride on the celestial merry-go-round.

But the story’s not over yet—there’s at least one more chapter

before the spectacular, mystifying, completely satisfying climax.

© 2017 Linda Rodriguez

"To the Nurse Who Told Me to Grieve for My Breast"--A Poem for Breast Cancer Awareness Month

It's National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, so I will be posting a couple of poems for it over the next few weeks. Now that I've made it out the other side of my battle with breast cancer, I post these in honor of those still fighting that war--and in honor of the medical teams, like my own phenomenal team, and the caregivers, family and friends who support all of us as we struggle to defeat this terrible opponent.

TO THE NURSE WHO TOLD ME TO GRIEVE FOR MY BREAST

I sit here unable to understand.

My breasts have been good to me,

I’ll admit to that—

lots of sexual pleasure

through the years,

large cup size when it mattered

to the world around me,

never any problem with infection,

mastitis, fibrosis, cysts.

When I had babies,

my breasts overflowed.

No problem nursing—

I pumped breast milk

for La Leche to deliver

to neonatal preemies.

Men and women who were born too soon

and struggled to live

may be alive today

in part because of my breasts.

It’s not like we’re talking

a hand, an eye, a leg.

It’s just a breast,

mostly a big inconvenience,

always in the way and vulnerable.

Not something I can’t do without.

Losing it won’t cripple me.

And the son of a bitch tried to kill me.

(Published in Black Renaissance Noire, 2015)

Book Excerpt--Motivating Yourself to Write

Writers often make resolutions to find time to write. I posted a blog about this recently here.

https://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com/2017/09/book-excerpt-to-find-time-to-write-your.html

However, even when this resolution is successful and the writer creates a workable writing schedule, such a resolution often ultimately fails because often writers have more trouble motivating themselves to actually write during the time they've scheduled than in finding or making the time to write. In fact, one of the reasons we as writers so often find ourselves over-committed and without dedicated time to write is due to our procrastination and lack of motivation.

To help with that problem, I offer an excerpt from my new writing book, Plotting the Character-Driven Novel, available in ebook and trade paperback here.

https://www.amazon.com/Plotting-Character-driven-Novel-Linda-Rodriguez/dp/097912915X

Motivating Yourself to Write

The trick is to motivate yourself to actually write in that time slot you’ve created. Most of us find it easier to disappoint ourselves than to disappoint other people, so if you can find a buddy or partner to help keep you accountable, that’s a great way to overcome that difficulty. Perhaps you two can call, text, or email each other every writing day with goals before your writing time and what you accomplished after that time is over. Or a group of writer friends on Facebook can do this for each other. I know a number of writers who post their day’s time spent writing or page totals on Facebook, and get lots of positive feedback from their writer friends for it—or consolation if they’ve missed their goal.

It’s also important to set regular rewards for yourself for completing planned segments of writing tasks. Putting your feet up with a cup of tea and a special treat. Spending time reading a book you’ve wanted to read. Buying yourself a book you want. Buying nice pens or blank notebooks or whatever desk/office gizmo you’ve been wanting or needing. Buying materials you’ve wanted for a craft project and--as a later reward--giving yourself time to work on that project. Lunch with one or more friends. Make a list of small, medium, and large rewards for fulfilling various writing commitments.

Also, schedule some creative refill time into each week and month. Take a walking or library or bookstore or art gallery or museum break every week, even if it’s only for thirty minutes. Take a nice blank book (one of your rewards) and a nice pen (another reward) and visit a lake, park, nature preserve, or riverside, just walking and sitting and writing with no stated purpose. Describe in writing what you see, what you feel, what you’re thinking, what you want to write someday or otherwise do someday.

If you’re serious about writing, reclaim your power. Would you treat your car the way you treat yourself? No, you would make sure it had as much quality fuel as it needed. You would buy new tires for it when they were needed. You would check its oil and get it regular tune-ups and other routine maintenance. You would do all of this because you know these things are important to keep it functioning at its peak. Show yourself as much consideration as you do your car. No car will run on empty, and neither do writers.

Make time to remember how to dream, and make time to bring those dreams into reality. Visualize your successful life as a writer, and then plan that change. Exercise your change muscles first by making small, unimportant, non-threatening changes in private areas. Learn to make a habit of changing things you are unhappy with—in your job, your home, your relationships, yourself. Envision the life you want to lead. Write it down. Check in with it often. Analyze problems. Get back on the horse when you fall off, and fix the problems that led you to fumble your plans or work routine. It’s always an ongoing process. No one’s perfect, but the only way you can truly fail is if you stop for good.

Book Excerpt--To Find Time to Write Your Novel, You Must Make Time to Write

I'm an autumn baby. Consequently, fall is always when I feel as if the year is truly beginning. Of course, among the Cherokee, this time of year is when we celebrate New Year--we believe the world was created in the fall--and among the Jews, as I've discovered from my husband, this is the season for their New Year celebration, Rosh Hashanah. For many parents and kids, the start of school is the start of the new year.

It's at the beginning of a new year when people make resolutions for self-improvement. Writers often make resolutions to find time to write. 

So, as my 2017 Cherokee/Jewish/schoolkid New Year's gift to all my writer friends out there, here to help with that problem is an excerpt from my new writing book, Plotting the Character-Driven Novel, available in ebook and trade paperback here.

https://www.amazon.com/Plotting-Character-driven-Novel-Linda-Rodriguez/dp/097912915X

This book is based on a class I've been teaching for years, which is always sold out. People have requested that I write it up as a book, so it's finally available. I hope you'll enjoy this section.

Book Excerpt--To Find Time to Write Your Novel, You Must Make Time to Write

Writing a novel requires several things—time, motivation, the willingness to keep learning the craft of fiction, and an ability or process to access your creative thoughts. We’ll deal with the first two in this chapter briefly since they’re mostly beyond the purview of this book, and the rest of the book will concern itself with elements of the craft of fiction and a process for accessing your own inner knowledge of your novel by freewriting, brainstorming by yourself, and thinking on paper. I will be including samples of actual work documents I have used with this process to create published novels in order to give you examples of how these techniques and tools work—and also to show that behind those perfect books you pick up at the bookstore lies a great deal of hard work, messy process, and flailing around. This book is designed to help you keep the flailing around to the minimum.

To Find Time to Write Your Novel, You Must Make Time to Write

How do you find time to write the novels which are your vocation in the midst of job and career demands, family and housework demands, community and societal demands? When everyone else expects so much from you that there’s nothing left for your own dreams, what can you do about it?

First, we have to change our terminology from “finding time to write” to “making time to write.” The sad truth is that no one finds time to write. There aren’t big pockets of time just lying around waiting to be picked up and used in most of our lives. For most of us, we’ll have to give up some comfort or pleasure to make real time to write—in some cases, to make any bits of time to write at all.

The first step is to make the decision to own your own life. Time is not a commodity--the time we’re talking about is the substance of your life. When it’s gone, so are you. If you want to write anything, you have to claim your own life and find out what you want.

How do you find those pieces of time and the regular schedule for writing that leads to a body of work? The trick is to create order and make a tourniquet for a time hemorrhage, but first you must destroy all of those 'shoulds' and 'what will people thinks' that are standing in your way. Make it easy on yourself by asking for help and accepting help when it’s offered to you. Take the time to de-stress. When you’re not frazzled by stress, you’ll find it easier to set limits and boundaries and hold to them.

Whenever you find your desk or day becoming chaotic, take time to reorganize. It will repay in more time that you can steal for your illicit love affair with the novel. To make sure you stay on track with those things that absolutely must be done, make a brief list of the way your time was spent at the end of each day and week. Check it for places where you abandoned time reserved for writing or other truly necessary tasks to engage with lower priority urgencies or comfort activities. After a disastrous day, sit down with a notebook and figure out how to handle things differently if you face the same situations again. Review the situation and just what happened step by step, pinpointing the spot(s) at which you could and should have made a different decision or taken a stand against someone else's urgency with your time. Figure out a strategy for dealing with this situation when it next arises, and write it down. Then forget the day and relax.

Worrying about the myriad things, some great but most small to tiny, that we must take care of wears us down. When you find yourself doing this rather than being able to write or revise the passage you want to work on, keep an ongoing master list and write down each task or obligation the moment you think about it. Get it out of your head and onto paper to free your mind and stop the energy drain. Then, later, you can decide which tasks can be delegated to someone else and arrange the remaining tasks in the order that will allow them to be done quickest and most easily.

We can also free up energy by developing habits and systems to take care of the mindless stuff. We already do this every day, brushing teeth, driving to work, without having to make decisions for each tiny action that comprises these tasks. Develop a system for handling things that recur, and stick with it for twenty-one days. Then it will be a habit, and you can forget it and set your mind free to be more creative.

Much time use is sheer habit. Work smarter. Find the ways in which you want and need to spend time. Steal those minutes and hours from low-priority tasks. Break down everything on your to-do list into small tasks and estimate the minimum time to accomplish them. (Double all time estimates!) Schedule into your calendar. If they won't all fit in the time allotted, then something must go. Nothing is fixed in stone--renegotiate and eliminate whatever you can. Of the rest, what can you successfully delegate? It pays to invest time (and money, if possible) in training someone to do it.

Become assertive. Don't be afraid to approach someone with a request, and don’t take it personally if they refuse you. Learn to say 'no' kindly and firmly and to receive a 'no' without letting it affect your self-esteem or your relationship. Be secure.

Author of many published novels and teacher of writing, Holly Lisle, says it the best way I’ve ever seen it. “Realize that real writers who write multiple books and who make a living at it have systems they use. A process for brainstorming, a consistent way of outlining a story, a certain number of words or pages a day, a way of plotting, a way of revising, a way of finishing. Writing is work. It doesn't fall out of your head by magic. It doesn't just happen because you want it to.”

End of Cancer Treatments + a Poem

My oncologist has agreed that I should go off cancer meds (Aromasin) and chemo. This is something that rated a celebration, so I took myself out to lunch after leaving the cancer clinic. (Do I know how to party, or what?)

This whole journey began over three years ago when, by sheer accident, they discovered cancer in my right breast. It never showed in any imaging. They did a lumpectomy to remove what they thought was a benign papilloma in one of the ducts--it was, indeed, benign--and discovered carcinoma. After three surgeries in two months, I ended up minus that breast and all its lymph glands and counting myself lucky, since the breast had been riddled with carcinomas that didn't show up in any diagnostic imaging. We had caught it just before it began moving out of the breast.

The mastectomy left me with lymphedema in my right arm, a condition that can't be cured but must be managed for the rest of my life. And my fierce, little oncologist who  sees herself in a never-ending battle with cancer (and whom I love and respect) put me on daily meds and an every-six-months infusion to try to prevent the same kind of hidden cancer from growing in my left breast. The side effects of these however, exacerbated my lupus and fibromyalgia, leaving me in massive flare continually. The fatigue and weakness, joint pain, and muscle pain and weakness decreased my mobility more and more as time passed. So I finally decided that I needed to stop at three years, even though she had wanted me to stay on this regimen for at least five years.

So I was nervous when I went in for my six-months treatment and told her I didn't want the chemo and had already stopped taking the Aromasin. I explained that I saw it as a quality-of-life decision--and to my great relief, she agreed with me. I didn't want to anger her. This woman, my wonderful female surgeon, and the rest of my medical team probably saved my life, and I'm eternally grateful to them. I just didn't want to spend any more years as a semi-invalid. 

So, as I finally put cancer behind me, I want to post this poem I wrote one day after my time in the chemo clinic. I met so many people who were fighting hard and sometimes pretty hopeless battles with such courage and dignity. I always came out of my time in the chemo chair--which was nowhere as awful as what some of them endured each time--with renewed respect for those other patients and for the nurses, who were always upbeat, kind, and truly caring.

IN THE CHEMO CLINIC

In the chemo clinic today cushy chairs raise us above

the ground like children with feet dangling until the nurses

put us in recline with our feet out in front

of us and our heads tilted back fluorescent colored

bags hang from rolling chrome towers a different color

for each of us we’re having a real party here this cold rainy

afternoon colorful plastic lines drip the bright

liquids into us every one to her own poison it’s just us

girls here today no guys this time gaunt gray cheeked

white haired if we had any left girls except

a few of us who have swelled like helium balloons

pumped to the breaking with the pills we take

at home and of course the nurses so good at finding

collapsed veins and installing new ports we’re trading

jokes cemetery humor and laughing even if some eyes

look scared or tired of the fight no one willing to be

the party pooper though all too familiar with the job

those bright colored chemicals leaving the bags

for our bodies do on the gut everyone laughing and praying

let me keep it down let me make it out and home

before it hits let me make it let me not die and leave

the drab dripping trees that I know will put out new shoots

green and lacy in the spring let me live to see them

let me be one of the ones who beats this

let me make it please let me make it

©Linda Rodriguez 2016

Poem for My Husband on His Birthday at Summer Solstice

In this photo, my husband Ben sits in the middle between our dear friend, Sergio Troncoso, and me at the 2017 AWP national conference.

Today is his birthday and the summer solstice. In less than two weeks on the Fourth of July, we will have been living together as a couple for 29 years, and on December 27th, we'll be legally married for 25 years. So I wanted to post a poem I'd written for him to celebrate his birthday and the Solstice.

I've written many poems for him, including the title poem of my chapbook of passionate love poems, Skin Hunger. But in today's solstice heat, I thought I'd post the one I wrote about the day after we arrived home from our honeymoon when he ventured out after an overnight ice storm for the newspaper and fell on the ice. It seemed to offer insights into the risky act of marriage itself.

WALKING ON ICE

after a back injury is a constant

putting yourself at risk.

I know this fear well

from years of setting nerve-damaged heel

firmly on glazed cement

that may turn banana peel on me

as if in some eternal silent film gag.

For you, it’s all new—

the discovery that solid earth can shift

you from upright to supine

as soon as the water on its surface hardens.

We age by learning

such hard truths, move through life

gingerly testing our footing, or else

by smashing the brittle in our way

and sweeping the shards

from the sidewalk.

It’s not so hard, learning

to balance on the shine.

Published in Heart's Migration (Tia Chucha Press, 2009)

Poem for Father's Day--"Safe At Last"

This photo is of my youngest brother's Little League baseball team and its coaches, including my stepfather (the small man on the left in the back row).

On Father's Day, it is this man I remember and honor, a man who took on a bunch of traumatized kids when he married my mother and earned his "Dad" the hard way, the man who died in my and my sister's arms with our brothers all around his bed in that town where none of us lived any longer. 

I wrote this poem after his funeral, and it seems appropriate for Father's Day and all of us whose fathers and stepfathers and father-substitutes are no longer with us to celebrate on the day in their honor.

 SAFE AT LAST

I can’t cry any more,

eyes swollen, lashes stuck together,

so come then, elusive sleep,

wipe the screen behind closed lids

of today’s grief. Show films

scrambled in the projector,

ends and beginnings framed

by the middle, split once

and then again, past still coming,

future remembered, present

dreamed but never known.

Mix the stilted eulogy and the trip to Disneyland.

Let him coach the scrubby little-league team

as we stand on glowing green plastic

artificial grass carpet

under the cobalt blue vinyl canopy,

listening to echoes

of his voice calling to my brother,

“Slide home. Go for it. Home.”

Published in Heart's Migration (Tia Chucha Press, 2009)