Brenda Cárdenas

Inverse

(after Amy Cropper’s Inverse, painted ash and hawthorn, 2011, Lyndon Sculpture Garden, Milwaukee, WI, and Ana Mendieta’s Body Tracks, paintings, 1982) 

Cropper stripped the Hawthorne
              of her skin, excised 
arms, painted war
              on her flayed torso
until she blazed--a squat flame
              igniting weeds, yellow 
leaves, even the snow mounting
              her lap. All year long,  
naked boughs glistened 
              like a flock of bloody wings. 

But when May pushes green 
              through cracked lips, 
blossoms from a torch 
              of lacquered limbs, I wait
for Ana Mendieta to step 
              out of the knotted wood,
trunk simmering, arms raised 
              in the V of free-
fall to our knees, broken
              stems regenerating.

---

Spiral Unwound from the Inside Out 

(after María Magdalena Campos de Pons’ Constellation, instant color prints, 2004) 

When she whirls against time, 
Anansi climbs her thatch to the sky, 
traps crow talk in his weave.        

Snagged twists, tangled kinks 
grow their own feet, 
arms and legs akimbo.         

Her crown of serpents 
uncoiling, questions stretch  
across pink sand, 

snap back to lasso twigs, 
rinds, straw binds her nest--
a home fleeting as dream.     

Black egg waits in a branch 
to hatch--feed and fly or starve,      
fall into open mouths.   

Braids scream like sprung 
whips, barbed wire, frayed 
ropes flung and dangling      

J-hooks, bound loops swung.                  
Whose eyes appear in clouds 
floating on the skin of water? 

River runs low, step its stones. 
Follow the trail inked thick 
as a runaway dreadlock.             

You may carry this knot 
as blood clot or embryo. 
Either way, she’ll break free.        

Come close: hive vibrating 
with sweet bees, mesh 
of thorns, cyclone.         

Loaded ship lost in the curl 
of whitecaps, crew hurls      
its cargo into a howling sea. 

Yemayá’s winds lift you 
from the waves by your tresses,       
aerial roots rising in a lilac sky           

until they sever the snarl at its         
neck. Hang its gnarled head        
like a peach pit, a talisman.       

One day you’ll tie the banks of re- 
member together. She’s tossed 
you the cord. Hold tight. 

Fading sun, island afloat 
in a milky sea. She releases     
her mother’s hand, drifts away. 

You keep, secret as dark     
stars or distant planets re- 
​turning again to their origin.

---

Chiral Formation ​

(after Roy Staab’s July 2012 installation on Little Lake, Lynden Sculpture Garden, Milwaukee, WI) 

Buckthorn saplings curve 
into hoops, linking boughs.  
Ring around the rosy. 

Four staked crowns etch 
surface. Barbed shiver. 
Pocket full of hands. 

What do you net 
in the intersect 
when you walk on water? 

A forest, my haunted face 
crowing, cumulous algae? 
Our ashes, child slim as a reed? 

Where does a lemniscate drift, 
chiral twin wander 
when the sun falls down? 

**** 

Down falls sun 
wander in   chiral 
drift scate              where 
reed           child        our
        cumulous  crowing
        haunt my  forest.

           Walk you 
intersect
         Do what?          

         Full    pock 
barbed     face 
etch     own    ake  

rosy     round  ing
         ink  oops    
             pling.  



--
Brenda Cárdenas is the author of Boomerang (Bilingual Review Press, 2009) and the chapbooks Bread of the Earth/The Last Colors with Roberto Harrison (2011) and From the Tongues of Brick and Stone (2005). She also co­edited Between the Heart and the Land: Latina Poets in the Midwest (2001). Cárdenas’ poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry, Latina/o Poetics, The Golden Shovel Anthology, City Creatures: Animal Encounters in the Chicago Wilderness, Angels of the Americlypse: New Latino/a Writing, The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry, Pilgrimage, The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century, and RATTLE, among others. Cárdenas served as the Milwaukee Poet Laureate from 2010­-2012, and in 2014, the Library of Congress recorded a reading of her work for their Spotlight on U. S. Hispanic Writers. She is an Associate Professor in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Wisconsin­ Milwaukee. ­­