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  • Hollyhock in Caliche Silence
  • Daníel R. Martínez (bio)

I've wondered endlessly what purpose hope serves when I know la muerte is waiting for me; it swept across an Alzheimer's bed, picked up the old woman and retreated, unseen, just as a caretaker walked past another door left ajar.

What more can I add to what has already been said about hands always covered in dirt, onionskin, and powder? What secrets can I unearth about dirty fingernails, bulbs, teacup roses never clipped and still climbing the abode into the eaves? How many coffee cans have been filled? And the hollyhock petals dropping on the caliche?

Now, twenty years after abulea's death, I want to believe the fine bones of her hands mattered even while they were slowly crushed to dust by the weight of a collapsing grave following a design; she wrote for forty years on elementary chalkboards with those hands; seasons turned for my waiting family, watching for the mound to drop into the small spaces between fine linen and a face—a nose, mouth, and eyelids sewn shut. [End Page 61]

Daníel R. Martínez

Daníel R. Martínez is a scholar/poet teaching creative writing and Chicana/o Literature at New Mexico Highlands University in Las Vegas, NM. He lives with family and pets in Albuquerque, NM.

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