Alison Roh Park

Ancestors

I want to go back to the time

when we were all buried together.

Children of colonial war raised

on lies that it’s better this way.

In the so-called new country, it turns into illness

in our bodies and minds. The next generation

drinks heavily, gives up frequently by

broken heart or one's own hand. We women

have actually been made crazy.

The path of least resistance is to believe

what they say is true.

Here our bodies lie separate.

One of my siblings sleeps on earthquakes,

another in a cold desert night, while our father

convalesces in mountains far from here,

nestled in leaves ablaze with death.

Is death like a bird separating from the soul?

Your god says there is nowhere for him now

but I save my dog’s ashes, imagine when this,

my own fat and hair will burn away too,

chips of bone and residual proteins a salty dust.

Here we are all together again, equals at last

in this final form.

Jemez Springs

We chase the sun into a valley, snow on peaks.

The dog calls the riverbank home.

The red of the rocks versus the red of the dirt.

A dog with eyes that match her hide.

A nuclear disaster. Farmland in the desert.

A taste for high altitudes, for revelatory landscapes.

For a lover who forgets.

A body finding refuge in various climates.

An era of ushering in.

Accidents

I'm just trying to be happy

until we walk again in our new bodies.

That's all it is, I learned, in a eureka moment—

all we are is this, physical and together

for the slightest moment. Our bodies are like

trucks, pain like metal frames colliding

with a mighty sensation so our eternal beings

can feel what truly matters

in this lifetime.

All experiences are instructional.

All suffering, if repeated, becomes rote.

Be careful—like a trickle of water on a boulder,

this is how formations get made, splitting

us apart along the way. My father caused me pain,

but if I close my eyes now,

I can feel in his memory the simple pleasure

of having a father on the planet, our feet hitting

the earth at the same time, same place.

Let me tell you about the crayon red finch

who hops on the boughs of this one tree in Ridgewood,

leaning in to feed the tiny crying mouths around him

in the hopes that just one might survive.