Melisande Luna is a Geoscience student at California State University, Bakersfield. A fifth generation native Californian, Melisande considers herself fortunate to have lived in many different California communities, including Sacramento, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, San Mateo and her current residence in Bakersfield. Her poetry has been published in numerous print journals and anthologies including, In Our Own Words --vol. 4, The Golden Wings --an anthology of world poetry, Carved in Sand, The Edinburg Geologist, The Bakersfield Californian, Fluid Ink Press, and Divine Pleasures.
On restless nights I've hammered north,
reeking of earth and onions:
Naked, she knelt in furrows
Alabaster skin encrusted with clay,
I went to reap memories
The copper-bite of loss ripened
hooked I-5 towards the valley,
came screaming down the Grapevine;
where August's breath blew
warm and pungent,
the scent of Lily's last gasp.
I remember the night her cornflower
eyes set with the stars --
as dusty palms crushed her lips.
amid mute foliage and chittering
witnesses, who scuttled and chewed,
indifferent to a fast meal's fate.
her iron tincture blossomed in gullies,
bloodied the vagabond river's loam.
of Lily, in the deeply plowed rows,
where breath quit her tiny lungs.
I'd let my footsteps kick up clouds of silt,
puffs as brief as my sister's quick life.
bitter among the onions,
where I harvested bumper crops.
On the lam, off the road
among stony outcrops
The echo of a broken record
questions to please-God-stop
but these thirsty mazes
whispering history over playas
I stroll across the Devil's bed
-h o p p i n g
over rills and washes
My boot-heels snap mesquite
Armed with lodestone and lead
--ringing my rock hammer
I chase the ancient
orogeny, my love
for the mountain
thirty-five miles south of Hell
keeping company with hawks
--begs
I can't love anything
where faces lie exposed
spinning Badwater legends with windy sighs
left slept-in and rumpled, I'm
where jasper clasts gather
sticks like hollow bones popping
I walk the fault
off bedrock knobs
thorough time. Hunting
Obsession: a question
Moonless and still
Hourglass hills curve like women's hips,
Icy spicules of distant suns
One fast trip off the canyon's highway;
a forever December night.
Michael rides frost rimed roads,
bike beneath him thrums hard,
eyes scan undulating asphalt.
lie on midnight sheets of heaven.
He throttles towards Sierra's cleft,
grinning,
as if he could bite the stars,
lick the Kern's loops and bows.
play poker with the shadows,
pull road worn jokers from tricky sleeves.
he thought there was enough
light for speed.
Is mistrust Dust Bowl bred,
Shame's worn under grandpa's boater,
Memories that they were those people,
"Look at them," our eyes said.
Desperation rode with them,
As feared, the dust storms followed,
They've tainted the valley with sorrow,
features in the eyes of Okies
like surprising iris rings?
discarded in evening's gloom,
protection from harsh elements,
the disdainfully glaring sun.
once, loaded in jalopies,
rattling their way westward,
impoverished and unwelcome.
Road-worn hags and vagabonds
with fifteen dirty children in tow.
My, how they breed; and why?
across a thousand desert miles
in the back between rattling boards
and dirty mattress ticking.
blight borne on Foëhn winds,
blanketed miles of fields
overworked by unlucky hands.
heeled kins' flesh into alluvial soils.
Dotted across the landscape -- shanties,
their ramshackle skeletons remain.
In chill dawn, steely mists
At sloe passes choked
I wend my way amid rusty beasts
blanket an industrial sight.
Where squealing flocks of strange raptors
poke alien beaks in oil sands
and suck.
with chaparral and sagebrush,
my feet beat heavy soil
as I think of mud weight,
blowouts
and the trail ahead.
exposed under Winter's foggy skies.
Iron skeletons rise starkly on the horizon
exhaling their fetid air.
There are no tumbleweeds east
Santa Anas blow the sand around,
like melted ice that filled flats,
Night comes like it always has,
of Olanche Peak, just lizards
to slither through bighorn fences,
skitter across a ribbon of blacktop
smacked with yellow lines.
mined from faces of volcanoes.
Chip, bounce and gone again
watery richness spread for miles,
snaking through washes where men
led burros to thirsty deaths.
dropping fast behind the Sierras,
like a bowl of cool sherbet slathered on tongues
it washes away the grit of days
spent beating down a mountain.
A cold
Firs reach
Blue lake
granite backbone
looms on valley's east side
Sierra Nevada slakes a
stream's thirst
with green fingers
to the golden sunlight
roots thrust deep in fertile soil
life thrives
an icy tarn
rests in dead glacier's cirque
cobalt mirror of sky reflects
heaven
"The Night Michael Workman Died" was previously published in Junket, "Midway Oil Field" and "Tumbleweed" were previously published in Carved in Sand, and "High Sierra" was previously published in Fluid Ink Press
All text and images in The Central California Poetry Journal are copyrighted. Copyright by © by Scott Galloway2002. All rights are reserved. See main Journal page for copyright information.
Authors and poets submitting original materials to this journal retain all rights to their original work, except those rights specifically assigned in writing to Solo Publications including the right to publish the submitted work in The Central California Poetry Journal. The poems on this page are copyrighted by the author. Copyright © Melisande Luna 2002 All Rights Reserved
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