Memory Demonstrates the Valley Fold

Mary Cisper

 

Teleprompting my mother last week—
splice question mark hands, migration routes:

homecoming takes four generations
to arrive in Mexico, polished and shined.

Freeze frame:   Hold it.  I’ve never been there.
When the chrysalis flusters,

cut to a bouldery landscape telling
a creation story, your choice—

“in the beginning” a science charm
like oxbows in rivers

and if a flower slow-mos inside out,
this enfolds—

yes, the tissue fragment:
the beating of their wings the sound of light rain

 

 

Floodplain

Mary Cisper

 

Boil water
at the back of the truck—

thermal cup,
migration

is bitterly cold

to a hardened
structure.

Dark,
to throw light,

cleave a stone.

Snow geese murmur
weedy facts,

muddled
mud a stopover
face.

Park here,
if you can’t see yourself,
the sun is about to—

Large tawny mother feeling,

listen,
it unseals—

as snow
rises

with both hands—

 
 

Mary Cisper has returned to northern New Mexico after completing an MFA at Saint Mary’s College of California. Recent work appears in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Terrain, and Denver Quarterly (forthcoming).