Melody Wilson
Melody Wilson is a Pushcart-nominated poet whose poems appear in Pangyrus, VerseDaily, The Fiddlehead, Crab Creek Review, San Pedro River Review, Watershed and elsewhere. She is pursuing her MFA at Pacific University. Her chapbook, Spineless: Memoir in Invertebrates came out in 2023. Find more of her work at melodywilson.com.
La Línea
Linda Louise brushes her auburn hair,
dead ringer for our abuela, Clara Louise.
Clara’s abuela was Maria Luisa.
Tongues thicken as bloodlines thin.
I am thinking in grandmothers,
unwinding la línea to where
hombres traded daughters to amigos
like sheep, gave them nombre blanco
after nombre blanco because
blood is cheaper than land. I’m thinking
en abuelas who clung to la línea in code.
Maria becomes Mary, Luisa Louise.
Mi Madre era una loca, insisted
I roll my R’s, wielded papers to prove
la línea: “My great, great abuelo, Agustín Olvera,”
she told grocery, gas station clerks,
“was first judge de la Ciudad de Los Angeles.”
Mi madre sold the papers to Cal Berkeley.
They’re filed under my father’s nombre blanco.
When mi madre told the story of her mother
“closing the track at Agua Caliente,”
what she meant to reclaim was the land.
But I picture mi abuela, a woman
muy pequeña, banging her handbag
on a gate. The racetrack runs
along the shore, the sand,
caliente as blood, dissolves
beneath my white feet.
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