She says my hair smells
like corn tortillas.
I raise an eyebrow.
After all those honeysuckle
and papaya shampoos,
I can’t believe my scalp hasn’t soaked up
the scent of blossom
or the perfume of rainfall.
No, she’s my mother,
and she insists
that even as a little girl,
my whole bedroom breathed
corn tortillas.
Pressing nose to pillowcase,
I search for masa,
reach back before molcajete and plow
to a dusky meadow,
its bed of soil flecked with teosinte,
ancestor grasses.
Up through the dark follicles of my skull
covered in sun-cracked husks,
push the black-brown silk strands, cocooning thirsty kernels.
Maíz sprouts into fields of thought bearing hybrid rows of words
that fall like teeth
from the mouths of the dead.
Reprinted from Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations, Vol. 4: Persons.
“Cornflowers” was originally published in Brenda Cárdenas, Boomerang (Bilingual Review Press, 2009) and appears here with permission.
