Self-Portrait as Sirens; Wake; Lethe; Wasp Woman by Jacqueline Balderrama

Self-Portrait as Sirens

Our story precedes us—a veil pulled forward in the wind,
one so constant, men learn to tell it themselves, then picture us
preening with mirror and comb, enchanting the storm,
or posing, as they have, with trophy fish—one for each soul.

He says that my body sings on its own—the beast suit
of soaring love and talon heartache pulled up to my waist
like a girdle. What do you expect dressed like that?
He says, Temptress. So many believe it.

Caution has us flocking together. We fly in fits and spurts
and glide underwater as cormorants turn feather to scale.
We hold a compact to look over one shoulder.
On any given day, the roar of distant waters

or news here in the shallows. Often, when sisters siren
so many act as though their ears were full of wax.

Wake

—after Greta Alfaro’s outdoor installation In Ictu Oculi / In the Blink of an Eye

Try to follow a single bird and it resists.
Spiraling about the floor in matching plumage
Vultures barge toward a half visible spot then bounce back.
Seven at a time occupy the dining table
pushing, tearing, flapping until they are one
large and trembling thing or harpies
with pronged feet crouching down to feast.

Where do you devise the boundary
when the table’s been placed outside,
when it’s swallowed by the shadow
of vultures? What’s home? What’s wilderness?

The room marked only by the dining set opens on all sides—
offers clinking glasses, clashed dishware,
overturned seating and china in the dirt.
There’s an absence of us and not enough chairs
for dozens whose wingspans exceed the table.
They remind us we too eat the dead.

If you let them, they can devour the disease,
the body that gives and withholds nothing.
Rewound—the prelude of quiet apocalypse—
winter orchards, the shallow incline of rocky hills
and wind turbines in the distance. The table set
with platters of fruit and bread, a stuffed bird,
a suckling pig, and six wine glasses. Wind ripples
the pastel tablecloth to tell us time is passing,
an invited shadow of overhead wings.

Lethe

Listen. It murmurs, this river: a woman’s voice
calling her daughter to say, My back burns when I shower. Come look.
In a glass beneath the faucet, water turns
dark as beer or urine.

Strange taste of oblivion steered town-ward.
It’s girth coils and spurts, catching flame
It’s mouths foam in huffed exhaust
of all its been fed.

Call it the River of Leaden Weights:
the woman cannot afford to move; her back keeps burning.
Her daughter must pick her up to drive her to the doctor
for the blistering rash, must bring cases of bottled water.

Experts trace dry streambeds and call it, ghostly.
The river now living on the insides echoes the dead
swept away by pneumonia and the unknown.
Maybe years from now it will be safe.

And the story—flowing the underworld of pipes
and in the woman’s voice and the voices of those still calling—
will it lull us to sleep, we who tire from hearing it? Or do we go
to the far side of the shore shouting their names?

Wasp Woman

We winter qweens wake without
somewhere between wept willows;
we wander wind-swooned meadows,
gnaw wood worked with wetness,
wearily whisk wasp-paper walls—
tomorrow’s woven wombs
towering down.

What wild wonder aglow within?
Wee waifs swig dew-chewed oakworm,
growing toward wriggling pillows—pawns
which brew below wafer-thin wrapping.
We await warmth when shadowgraphs
will dawn wasp-waisted women
row following narrow row.

Welcome, wunderkind—unwrinkled, unflawed.
Worker waves warrant swarming midwifery,
wider dwellings, crapperclawed crowds.
Wasps worth two weeks vow
renewed winsomeness: counterweights
outwitting countdowns’ crawl
while twilight qweens bestow few power.

Newly-crowned, we answer wasp whim.
We withdraw following wanderlust,
wholeheartedly bewitching fellows
who, awestruck, wink, swirl, swoop.
We waltz, entwine knowing
winter’s weighty gown will wipe away swarms,
while we were endowed with prowess.

What harrowing views foreshadow wasp ways
within sweet, woozy shows written
while we winterize within woods,
wedged below awnings, burrowed between walls?
Snows will overwhelm. Winds bewilder.
We yawn, swollen with counterworld jewels,
wording somehow, somewhere, someway,

we’ll wear yellow, maw, twisting awl,
warning when airworthy we wake.

Jacqueline Balderrama is the author of Now in Color (Perugia Press, 2020) and the chapbook Nectar and Small (Finishing Line Press, 2019). She recently completed a Virginia G. Piper Fellow-in-Residence position leading the Thousand Languages Project and directing CantoMundo at Arizona State University. For more, visit: jacquelinebalderrama.com