And these are dedicated to all the junior high school
women who died in junior high.
"Evergreen."
Evergreen clung to her hair, a depth perception.
Her strung out red, blurred the vision,
the great eating inside out.
She shot up vials of yellow sap, the menthol fire of alcohol
in the mix.
The fixing of future in the passing of sense.
The third eye, a hole in her arm to the hip,
a swelling of lip, the crackling of something foreign.
The wildfire taste of eucalyptus.
Magic happens in a needle.
Evergreen medicine filling the air with cedar.
The bow that covers the runaway slave.
The branch that feeds the flame, evergreen
forests with their memories older than our own.
We hold their ragged hands in photographs
that hung with dates.
The births and deaths of our voyages.
Evergreen the immense growing sequoia and scrub
pine hug the depths, un abrazo to the air,
to what grows within.