All in by Violeta Garcia-Mendoza
by Violeta Garcia-Mendoza
What does it mean that I’ve been dreaming
about sunlight moving through old houses
again? Vine-shadow on wood floors, endless
rooms, the sound of wingbeats without birds.
Pittsburgh wisdom says you need a week in Florida
when you can’t get out of bed. I up or down
my dose of antidepressants when the clocks change.
In the dreams, I wear a white dress, dust dragged
along its hem. The houses are dis-inhabited
but I know I’ve lived in some version of them.
In real life I try to leave the past empty, open;
a good mother haunts her life only in forward motion.
When the nerves at my right hip shriek down my leg,
I know it means my body needs to stretch.
I should exercise, drink more water, rest—
but I get through winter reading Gothic horror;
I trust myself with only so much selfishness.
In this city, potholes become a sign of character
as much as of neglect. I remind my children all is still well
when the bridges sway. In traffic, we count turkey vultures
circling in the steel gray and call it soaring.
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Violeta Garcia-Mendoza is a Spanish-American poet, teacher, and suburban wildlife photographer. Her poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals, and in 2022, she received a grant from the Sustainable Arts Foundation. She is a member of the Madwomen in the Attic Writing Workshops at Carlow University. Violeta lives with her husband, teenage children, and pack of rescue dogs on a small certified wildlife habitat in western Pennsylvania. Songs for the Land-Bound is her debut collection.
by Violeta Garcia-Mendoza
In the past sixty minutes, the mother-poet
has not written a dozen lines. Her resting
heart rate crests 119 beats per minute
twice a day, on average. This began in 2020;
it is 2022. Of her three children, one kicks
the table leg every seven seconds, another
counts songbirds in the quarter-acre yard aloud,
a third reads from a book of little-known statistics:
The safest color car is white; two out of five
people marry their first love; a woman
is more likely to be killed by a champagne cork
than a shark. In her inbox, a litmag says
no thanks, but send more poems. In other news,
a Japanese amusement park advises patrons scream
inside their hearts. Sea level rise holds steady
at one-eighth of an inch per year. Four out of five
surveyed Americans are likely to describe the sun
as shining. It is almost dinnertime; no trains
leaving the station. There are over 10 trillion living
cells in every human body. Based on this set
of data calculate the future probable
with a single roll of one icosahedron die.
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Violeta Garcia-Mendoza is a Spanish-American poet, writer, photographer, and teacher. She is a member of Carlow University’s Madwomen in the Attic Writing Workshops and a reader for Split Rock Review/Press. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Peatsmoke, District Lit, and Saint Katherine Review. Violeta lives with her family in Western Pennsylvania.
