Diaspora de L’angélique

Editor’s Note: Diaspora de L’angélique was first published in The Women’s Resource Center’s The Matrix, Spring 2013. Humboldt State University.

We come from Arizona, from Mexico, from Los Angeles;
Our names forgotten,
Our past rewritten
Our hearts barely beating.

We moved, then settled,
Somewhere between mediocrity and apathy;
erasing our warrior ancestry.

Spilled blood, saturated in captured in oil,
And celebrated with hallow planks of burning redwood desire,
Remind us that here too are the remnants of genocide.
I ask, “Who still has the strength to smile?”

I have crossed rivers, bridges and borders
from La Mirada to the Avenues;
I have slept while gunshots wept
And helicopters screamed ownership of
Padre Sky’s Face.
And yes, I jumped fences, over barbed wired
only to find more twisted metal in my pathway…

Now I walk barefoot,
Having released the lawless shackles of yesterday.
Looking back,
I see the trail of tears, sweat and blood my ancestors left.
Looking forward,
I see the seeds of their efforts
Beginning to push through the dirt.

We came, from Arizona, from Mexico, from Los Angeles,
our names forgotten
our past rewritten
But our hearts still beating.