Home, for Camila

Our Bouvier Charcoal, "would sit in the shade all day,
and smell the flowers."
(Paying tribute to Munro Leaf's The Story of Ferdinand)

Home?

My dog sleeping away all day long

Nestled in a corner of the kitchen,

yellow

Against the green leaves of plants,

Overgrown as window shades

To hide the heat of summer

Or glare of winter’s day?



Or is home a memory of days

With sisters running on the beach of waterfronts,

On boardwalks laughing, eating cotton candy,

Talking of our daily conquests?



Heat radiates through windows,

Warmth fills the sun drained dusty day.

The laughter of my daughter’s eyes

glitters miles away through computer graphics.

Glaring pictograms, even as warm and fuzzy fun rays

Wrestle my doddering day old doldrums,

And her singsong voice, her vale,

Her voluptuous vapor bantering



Force me to forget my mundane life.

This Place: CPF to AMFT

This Place

This place has become my refuge.
      Here I can be invisible,
      lost in thought,
      dreaming of a homeland
            far, far away,
      or of one right next door.

My Dreamer, My Mims
© Ana M. Fores Tamayo

This place has become a translation
      of many worlds;
      a reconstruction of notably,
           no, vastly
        different cultures, languages, and people,
           into one whole,
                     one home.

It is a house full of color
      that shouts and
           soothes at the same time;
A space full of sounds:
      voices floating between languages,
           wind chimes you so love
           chattering in the breeze;
A melting pot of smells:
      freshly mowed lawns,
      your delicious, eclectic meals,
      tempting our ravenous mouths;But most of all, a book of memories,
      compiled from the various places
to which we are invariably tied:
      Spain, Cuba, Venezuela, the United States, Mexico, and finally
                                      Texas, a place all of its own.
      
       Over the years, as these memories have grown,
This place
      has transformed from a house
            into a home.

       

This poem is for you, Mom. Despite my seemingly constant complaints and excuses to get out of the house these past few years, now I can’t seem to stop thinking about home. Even though I thought you were crazy for wanting to paint our foyer gold, I now can’t imagine it any other way; it lights up the whole room. 

Our foyer, with its masks on gold
© Ana M. Fores Tamayo

Although I’m sometimes embarrassed that my friends point out the eclectic or even eccentric style of decoration, the crazy masks from all over the world and somewhat random assortment of art (paintings, sculptures, ceramics, etc.) have become familiar to me. 

If those were taken away, a part of me would go with them. 

It’s not just the material things that have made it a home, though. Your sometimes wacky, “I don’t need a recipe” style of cooking tastes like home. Its aroma filling the air as I come down the stairs smells like home. Its general lack of presentation and consideration of aesthetics looks like home. Our family gathered around the kitchen table, saying our grandparents’ prayer in Spanish and then switching back and forth between languages in conversation sounds like home. Everything about our house feels like home, and that’s mostly because of you. So thank you Mom, for insisting that we not treat our home like a hotel, and for truly making it a place of comfort, of family, and of love.

       Love you like pencils love poets,

Camila

rainbow fish: CPF to AMFT

Camila Pacheco-Fores
5/19/2012 & 6/14/2012 & 8/10/2012

you are a fish
obsessed with the rainbow when we were young
now you wear those scales on your skin
and shoot flying colors behind you
as you swim through the sky
nothing interrupts your flight
into fields of blue and white
as i watch you glide past our reef

In Paracas, Peru

my anemone hands holding you no longer
i’m reminded of swishing tails of fantasia fish
us cuddling on couches watching classical tunes
make their way across our imagination

beachside castles also come to mind
memories of summer days spent wading through the waves
squealing and laughing at everything and nothing
plans of moats and palisades
made to protect our fortress of family
each tower a pillar of our faith
in the bonds of blood and the love of each other
we were inseparable, you and i
following each others footsteps
into forests and fields alike
climbing pyramids and haystacks
conquerors of childhood kingdoms
born from the dust kicked back
by our matching

Determined, Thoughtful... in Chichen-Itza
© Ana M. Fores Tamayo

click-clack, click-clack

now that rhythm is yours alone
as the world becomes your stage
and i blend into the audience
staring in amazement at who you have become

a glowing presence of every color light
frequencies formed in the shape of a fish
who somehow has learned how to survive
in the water and in the sky

while you are now a creature of the sea and clouds
the earthly acropolis of our younger years still stands strong
and though we no longer share time, space, or season
our heartbeats still sing tunes as one
and the lines made by our smiles
always remember there is nothing worth sharing
like the love that lets us share our name

ShadowLove

Soft Animal: CPF to AMFT

Camila Pacheco-Fores
5/18/2012 and 5/29/2012

i watch my feet as they step across the pavement
over cement circles that run circles in my mind
i can’t quite figure out why
i feel like shit
karma’s just a bitch i guess

Trees in Snow © Ana M. Fores Tamayo

another selfish saturday
and all i can think about are my own issues
the stinging at the back of my throat
and the pounding of my head

but what about that person
whose esophagus sears every day
every time they have to keep quiet

my pipes ache from talking too much
but theirs won’t stop burning from the silence
the beating of my brain comes from
the sickness in my body
but theirs is from the sickness of society
slinging words of hate
not even thinking before they discriminate



so that one poor soul is
forced to sew their mouth shut
so as not to draw unwanted attention
not free to own the body, the mind, the emotion
they were given
for fear of causing some commotion

sometimes the quiet even permeates the soul
true self hidden from their own eyes
because of lies they’ve been told by the outside
but why should outside affect inside?

i met a boy the other day
sixteen and scared he looked straight into my eyes while his said
“i think i’m gay”

he said “there’s this monster inside me
that i struggle with everyday
that makes me look at him that way

my soul wants to melt into his skin
and breathe in his life as my own
my body wants to fit into his
like we are the only two pieces
of our own puzzle
but i feel like i could never …”

well i’m here to say
that’s no monster in your soul
but a beautiful beast
waiting to be released

Camilagenderfluidity © by Camila Pacheco-Fores

let the soft animal of your body love what it loves

let the wolf in your chest howl at the moon
chase the wind that tickles your fur
and makes your heart leap

let the soft animal of your body love what it loves

let the fangs of your teeth
sink into the earth
draw out every bit of love from life itself
and never apologize

let the soft animal of your body love what it loves

let your coyote cry soar to the sky
and the stinging in your esophagus cease

because this world isn’t anything
if not wild
and we are nothing if left imprisoned by silence

A Gust of Wind: CPF to AMFT

Camila Pacheco Fores 

A gust of wind enters from the crack in the window and tickles my neck.

I close my eyes and remember days of laying about, feeling the breeze
envelop my body;
Wishing that wind had hands,
had a body,
a soul;

Wishing that breeze were not just a breeze, but a person...

A person to hold me, caress me gently, play with my hair, and

        flirt with the idea of removing my clothes.

A person to love,

                        a person to belong to.

But, alas, this breeze is just a change in atmospheric pressure that has now ceased.

Again, I’m in the classroom, alone in my hard chair.

A room full of people,

                none of whom are my person.

Northern Winds
© Ana M. Fores Tamayo

Paths through the Web of Life: CPF to AMFT

December 6, 2010

Camila Pacheco-Fores

We create paths.

Paths that weave in, out, and around. 
Paths that create a web,  
A network of memories that we've embedded in them.


My web spans the world.
It reaches across continents, oceans, rivers mountains hills canyons valleys forests. 
I have attached my memories like silk strands 
to Peru, Argentina, Chile, Cuba; 
In Mexico, Venezuela, and America 
I have even traced little weblets. 

The largest, most intricate piece of my web sprawls across Texas, 
embracing my hometown with strands of silk 
that capture flies of my memory; 
Memories created along the paths that hold them, 
created with people who are like drops of dew. 
They join me every morning, making my patterns more beautiful, 
making my threads glisten, 
yet allowing me the day to grow on my own. 
And what is best of my people of dew is that they fall anywhere, anywhere I go. 


Now that my web has extended to another home, 
new and different droplets, mixed with the old,   
gather around me and new paths are made. 


My web is just beginning.


My white threads have yet to weave their patterns,
have yet to meander their way into stitches joining together web lives, dew people, and fly memories,
have yet to take those further, creating a quilt of life with patches of people and stitches of memories.


Soon enough.


Soon enough the paths I create will form a web,
adding breadth to my life's quilt.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVtYjC1NPXcMusic: "To Build A Home (Radio Version)" by The Cinematic Orchestra (Google Play • iTunes • eMusic)

In answer to your Battle Lines: AMFT to CPF

© Camila Pacheco-Fores, A Self Portrait 

By Ana M. Fores Tamayo

As I read your battle lines, I am consumed
by the loveliness of rhythm, sound, lyric,
forgetting that words speak sorrow, introspection and sometime hurt.


How can I trace the browns and whites of those ancestries,
the contour of your days and times of long ago,
when you played as a child with other golliwogs and ragdolls,
laughing crying smiling growling,
yet inside all this time you were thinking about those battle lines inside you,
that deep brown cicatrix,
that darkness, that difference, that oddness that made you so you,
that made you so lovely?


Yet you did not see that,
you just stared at those deep tan lines that sheltered your musky secret…


So I wonder now why I did not tell you.


I had my secret tan lines too,
my trouble with language with homeland
With people not accepting that I was thinking something inside me

 but I was saying something other,
that I was smiling bemused, beaming happy-go-lucky,
yet I was black inside, hidden: forbidden?
My sister Lupi always told me I was darkness.
She hated my poetry.
She loved its sway, its nuance.
So.
She loathed it mostly because she said it was someone other
who wrote those words.
It was not the laughing me,
the me of the mischievous senses,
the telling marauder of tales,
the intoxicating dark entrancing eyes
wrapping entwined seductions of love songs,
but a dark somber other she did not know.
And I scared her.


I grasped that my terminologies had such effect on people,
My meanings caused loved ones so much pain.
Hence I blocked even my most intimates from seeing my illusive missives,
my scrambled considerations,
and I wore my meditations on the inside, much like your tan lines
that faded deep down into the reaches of your white.


Time passed on and I kept writing,
yet it became secretive, taboo,
a blackness not meant for common girls,
not destined for thinking girls,
not intended for girls who wanted day-to-day fineries and wine.
Eventually I forced myself
—consciously and conspicuously— not to write.

At first it was hard.
It pained me when I would wake in the middle of the night
and I would scramble for that pen and paper
and scratch in darkness words that poured out of me without thought,
but then I would stop myself and say no, I cannot.
And as I would
halt,
and time wore on and on,
it became easier,
just like your tan lines that faded
and you thought your “brown pushed deep within”. 

Life went on and took on other meanings.
Literary musings gave way to baby bottles and scraped knees.
Those gave way to soccer games and coaches,
bassoon concerts and choir recitals,
all things teens and growing children do.
Thus I forgot all about my tan lines.
And my musings…
Until I read your own.


So now I look back and read with loveliness
and dreams about your tan lines,
and I feel that though they will never leave you—
as they never quite left me—
they might become faded for some time.
They might show the “boundaries of battle played out,”
they might even show “where the sun has never lingered,”
but they will come back,
inescapably, unavoidably, undeniably
one day.


They will return because they’ve never left.
And they will embrace you,
loveliness and deep,
because these tan lines are always there,
always haunting.


These tan lines are permanent reminders
that we are not dark, but we are deep,
and we are, always, truly meaningful. 

Girls at Beach, by Dinorah Fores

Battle Lines: CPF to AMFT

By Camila Pacheco-Fores
15/9/2013 & 17/9/2013

I have permanent tan lines. Confined within my bikini lines this skin that stays hidden seems alien to me. Sometimes I look down and think­­ is that my real color? The neutral, natural surface unaffected by the sun­­ is that my true hue? Though faded in winter they never go away and by the time summer ends­­ three months of nothing but sun­­ I’m permanently clothed in my white bathing suit. At times the lines are a sense of pride when golden brown looks that much richer against fluorescent white, giving me bragging rights of how well I tan. “It’s because I’m hispanic” “I don’t even have to wear sunscreen” “I spent allll summer outside.” Among my predominantly white friends, I always won.

Nude by Camila Pacheco-Fores

But recently I’ve felt betrayed by the sinful skin that never sees light of sun because some days I look down and see my “true” color.

I am not Latina.  

I am not hispanic.  

I am not a woman of color.  

I grew up in a white suburban town and became a white suburban girl.

Though my parents may have come from countries where spanish floats in the air they breathe and every inhale is thick with español; I am not a woman of color. though the best three years of my childhood were spent blabbering and dancing l​as palabras y acento de mexico
White suburban Texas beat the brown out of me
not just color but syllables and every time they said my name with an “eh” instead of “ee”

I believed it 

Camilla Camilla Camilla

They saw my name and thought “eh” ­­ too complicated
They saw my skin and thought “eh” too complicated to try and understand that she’s anything other than Mexican which to them meant

illegal 

poor 

builds houses then cleans them but still eternally dirty and with their grime steal jobs money homes lives of us pure innocent hard working white people

so seven year old looks at her skin and thinks sin
and so begins the endless battle against tan lines within

Over the years my public world turned white­­-- perfect english no spanish clothes that masked wide hips and big butt eyebrows plucked upper lip waxed legs shaved hair straightened that one hollister mini skirt worn at every opportunity.

I didn’t even know what I was doing all I knew is that I wanted to be what I thought was normal; to be just like my friends, for my hair to be “perfect” which in middle school meant straight long blonde and beautiful, for my name to be ashley so everyone would stop stumbling over my syllables, and for no one to call me a beaner then say “RUN” whenever the police drove by.

Juana Cecilia, the Mexican calaca
guarding the entrance to our home

I kept my spanish inside invited very few home so as not to scare them away with the Mexican calacas by our front door, one of the many "weird" decorations so unlike the Martha Stewart homes of my friends. I didn’t want them to hear my father speak his accented english or my mother push food with too many spices.

For 10 years my tan lines were reversed­­--white on the outside and brown pushed deep within until I knew I was finally getting the hell out of that place like I’d been waiting for.

On my 18th birthday I got the tattoo on my left shoulder, engraving family, Mexico, and heritage on the back of my heart so with every beat the color seeps back through me. But some areas will always be bleached. The white on my skin physically shows where the sun has never lingered, but with my eyes this skin outlines the boundaries of battle played out across my body still.

I have permanent tan lines. 

A beginning, of sorts... AMFT to CPF

   

Mims did this at the high school one year, at my insistence, and she got her friends to help. 

But it was her vision, her dream... 

Before I left the school, I made sure to get a photograph of her beautiful mural. 

I wonder if it is still up?  

Like the willowy silence of spring

you dance happy with yourself,

a larkful of color

bright upon the reef of sunset.

You growl dinosaurs at me,
and you laugh melodically
at my surprise.
How symmetry and balance
make you bubble with exuberance.
How smiles of twinkling giggles

echo in your bright brown eyes.

How I want to share in your experience:

mud-toes, tadpoles, stony sneakers,

and yellow-orange joy.

The pirate ships will take you

where I cannot go,

but if you let me peek blue-wonder

through your delicious jump-rope eyes,

I promise songs and kisses,

lilting lullabies,

mist balloons and unicorns,

a good-night song versed with kings

and wondrous princes,

a shoe-fly dragon, too,

to fill your penguin smile

with playground puppets

and purple parrot dreams.

I originally wrote this poem for Andy, when he was just two in 1990. Then I dug it up again from the cobwebs of memory and I re-dedicated to my Mims in 2007, on her 15th birthday. 

I thought it was a nice way to begin this blog...