Sophie Kaiser Rojas
Cradle
In the Mexican city of Mazatlán, Sinaloa—the same coast where hundreds of thousands came to catch the first view of the total eclipse—there is a movement to prohibit traditional banda musicians from performing on local beaches to accommodate tourists.
We know it’s begun when sun through the trees
projects crescents about the pavement, like
lunar indents left in the tender skin
of a plum plucked too fast, a hand held
too hard. Totality sounds hauntingly
absolute, as if the blackening route
won’t cease until it's eaten all the brass
of brightness in its way, leaving a quiet
pit where light was once cradled. When the day
unbruises and blue refills the pallid
skies—when the dark retires, full-stomached,
to where it came from—all that remains is
hollow beach, stagnant space between the leaves:
each tree made a silent witness of its own emptying.
Awaiting the Occasion of Some Impending Mourning
At the base of the ridge, our tent is black
ink spilled on the night’s blue. I lay restless
in my sleeping bag, awaiting
the impending morning. I’m trying
to imagine it—waking up in the dark
for an unmarked trail, stomach sick
with the early hour. I could try to rhyme care
and cairn, to pile careful stacks of stones
that beacon the way. Prepare to scramble up
switchbacks: the weight of absent air; elevation gain
and loss. What have I ever had
taken from me? Juniper groves begin to thin
as you climb, then spruce and sagebrush, dissipating
pine. And yet, even above the treeline, wild
flowers still grow, sustained by the snowmelt--
indigo braids of larkspur unraveling
from the graveled path, pillows of moss hugging
the terrain at the peak. I want softness
that survives. I want metaphor with nothing
surrendered: a kite swelling with height against the dawn-
dipped sky. But I can’t speak to the end
of what I haven’t started, so I lie
here, in the cold, in this row of sleeping
chests, rising and deflating like the crests
that await us. A lung surrenders its air in order
to breathe. The tent fills with the warmth of our losing.
Sophie Kaiser Rojas is a poet from Littleton, Colorado. She has publications in The Nashville Review and Rattle. She is a recipient of the Fulbright fellowship. Sophie resides in Mexico City, where she is writing and teaching in the English department at the Facultad de Estudios Superiores Acatlán UNAM.
Return to May 2024 Edition
In the Mexican city of Mazatlán, Sinaloa—the same coast where hundreds of thousands came to catch the first view of the total eclipse—there is a movement to prohibit traditional banda musicians from performing on local beaches to accommodate tourists.
We know it’s begun when sun through the trees
projects crescents about the pavement, like
lunar indents left in the tender skin
of a plum plucked too fast, a hand held
too hard. Totality sounds hauntingly
absolute, as if the blackening route
won’t cease until it's eaten all the brass
of brightness in its way, leaving a quiet
pit where light was once cradled. When the day
unbruises and blue refills the pallid
skies—when the dark retires, full-stomached,
to where it came from—all that remains is
hollow beach, stagnant space between the leaves:
each tree made a silent witness of its own emptying.
Awaiting the Occasion of Some Impending Mourning
At the base of the ridge, our tent is black
ink spilled on the night’s blue. I lay restless
in my sleeping bag, awaiting
the impending morning. I’m trying
to imagine it—waking up in the dark
for an unmarked trail, stomach sick
with the early hour. I could try to rhyme care
and cairn, to pile careful stacks of stones
that beacon the way. Prepare to scramble up
switchbacks: the weight of absent air; elevation gain
and loss. What have I ever had
taken from me? Juniper groves begin to thin
as you climb, then spruce and sagebrush, dissipating
pine. And yet, even above the treeline, wild
flowers still grow, sustained by the snowmelt--
indigo braids of larkspur unraveling
from the graveled path, pillows of moss hugging
the terrain at the peak. I want softness
that survives. I want metaphor with nothing
surrendered: a kite swelling with height against the dawn-
dipped sky. But I can’t speak to the end
of what I haven’t started, so I lie
here, in the cold, in this row of sleeping
chests, rising and deflating like the crests
that await us. A lung surrenders its air in order
to breathe. The tent fills with the warmth of our losing.
Sophie Kaiser Rojas is a poet from Littleton, Colorado. She has publications in The Nashville Review and Rattle. She is a recipient of the Fulbright fellowship. Sophie resides in Mexico City, where she is writing and teaching in the English department at the Facultad de Estudios Superiores Acatlán UNAM.
Return to May 2024 Edition