The Saint of Land

// Linda Ravenswood

Memories of strangers

I make a tortilla. It is a flat,
Somewhat splendid weft of wheat. Splendid because
It is, in the whole Life is bursting and
We eat and squint in the Sun way and Somewhat
Because, you never know. My mother nursed
The hairs of wheat that made this leavening
Ivory leaf, up through the rocky crumbles
Of land out back. She nursed the rows and curls
In tears and puffs and splits, her mouth hanging
Wet and heaving, making her digs in the dirt
And her digs at my father, long gone, with
What she would have said, what she wished she could
Have called home to braid and boil and wake him.
Behind the house, in her sweat, her fingerblood,
Her hot dna, she calls the wheat forth,
Every fulcrul arm in the field a prayer,
Alone on our acre. I should go out to
Help her meet the grain. I should run to do
Mitzvot and help her bring it in, but it’s
Trouble buttoning the cardigan, trouble
Even to lift my fatty feet over
The crib slats; I am two and watching her
In the window, crying why, and raging
Like a stevedore over the ropes of
Wheat.
Wheat — that mocks the brambles on,
Wheat —
That sops the honey gone,
Wheat —
That turns the skies on end
Over and Over in the beige bends,
Back up to the slit where the moon crawls in,
Creaking in the wind duffs
In the evening din,
Speaking of the belly and the hot pee scent of
Wheat after it’s gone through the whole body, spent.
The day tumbles down and the child trundles round
And the wheat silky groans in the black outside.
My mother was a game and my father was a name
And I stand on the lot where the visions came;
No longer of Wheat, no longer of she,
Just a pocket of money for my lover and me
Out of the field and into the chair
The whiling, styling of ease in the chair;
The wheat that soaked my eyes is ended
The wheat that took her youth is burnt
The wheat that was our cheapest legacy
Is dead in rotted stomachs of old men from Nebraska