Cannery Town in August

1954 –

All night it humps the air.
Speechless, the steam rises
from the cannery columns. I hear
the night bird rave about work
or lunch, or sing the swing shift
home. I listen, while bodyless
uniforms and spinach specked shoes
drift in monochrome down the dark
moon-possessed streets. Women
who smell of whiskey and tomatoes,
peach fuzz reddening their lips and eyes—
I imagine them not speaking, dumbed
by the can’s clamor and drop
to the trucks that wait, grunting
in their headlights below.
They spotlight those who walk
like a dream, with no one
waiting in the shadows
to palm them back to living.

“Cannery Town in August” from Emplumada by Lorna Dee Cervantes, © 1981. All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15260. Used by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.

Meeting Mescalito at Oak Hill Cemetery

Sixteen years old and crooked
with drug, time warped blissfully
as I sat alone on Oak Hill.

The cemetery stones were neither erect
nor stonelike, but looked soft and harmless;
thousands of them rippling the meadows
like overgrown daisies.

I picked apricots from the trees below
where the great peacocks roosted and nagged
loose the feathers from their tails.
I knelt to a lizard with my hands
on the earth, lifted him and held him
in my palm—Mescalito
was a true god.

Lorna Dee Cervantes

1981

Crow

She started and shot from the pine,
then brilliantly settled in the west field
and sunned herself purple.

I saw myself: twig and rasp, dry
in breath and ammonia smelling.
Women taught me to clean

and then build my own house.
Before men came they whispered,
Know good polished oak.

Learn hammer and Phillips.
Learn socket and rivet. I ran
over rocks and gravel they placed

Lorna Dee Cervantes

1981

Freeway 280

Las casitas near the gray cannery,
nestled amid wild abrazos of climbing roses
and man-high red geraniums
are gone now. The freeway conceals it
all beneath a raised scar.

But under the fake windsounds of the open lanes,
in the abandoned lots below, new grasses sprout,
wild mustard remembers, old gardens
come back stronger than they were,
trees have been left standing in their yards.
Albaricoqueros, cerezos, nogales . . .
Viejitas come here with paper bags to gather greens.
Espinaca, verdolagas, yerbabuena . .

Lorna Dee Cervantes

1981

Poems

Cannery Town in August

More by this poet

Meeting Mescalito at Oak Hill Cemetery

Crow

Freeway 280

Poems

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Cannery Town in August

More by this poet

Meeting Mescalito at Oak Hill Cemetery

Crow

Freeway 280

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