Future Vigil for a Generational Wound
It’s dark on the water.
In the shifting candlelight,
I wear the color of ectoplasm
to the vigil for what has been vanquished.
My mother’s ever-present hair ribbons.
My grandmother’s single high-heeled shoe in a reddish hue.
My offering of tobacco and song to the land.
All these things
disperse from my hands
across the textured ripples, fanning out, waving,
pursuing a different family to haunt perhaps.
On to the next congress.
In life, the women in my family line
had the resilience
but not the space or the tools
to chip away
at their trauma. In death, all their hope rests on me.
They send me dreams of coded weaponry.
I awake with words that are not my own in my throat.
These words
fuse a crystal
of light
to warm our shoulders
across the realms.
Chip,
chip,
thunk.
After the carnage,
I breathe out
without the secrets, the lies,
for once.
(Previously published in Not Ghosts But Spirits vol. II by Querencia Press)
Violeta Garza is a Latinx poet and artist from San Antonio, TX. Her debut poetry chapbook Brava was a semifinalist for the 2023 Nine Syllables Press Chapbook Contest, and will be released in September 2025 by First Matter Press. She never fully trained her tongue to roll her R's. You can peruse her work at violetagarza.com or on Instagram: @violeta.poeta.
It’s dark on the water.
In the shifting candlelight,
I wear the color of ectoplasm
to the vigil for what has been vanquished.
My mother’s ever-present hair ribbons.
My grandmother’s single high-heeled shoe in a reddish hue.
My offering of tobacco and song to the land.
All these things
disperse from my hands
across the textured ripples, fanning out, waving,
pursuing a different family to haunt perhaps.
On to the next congress.
In life, the women in my family line
had the resilience
but not the space or the tools
to chip away
at their trauma. In death, all their hope rests on me.
They send me dreams of coded weaponry.
I awake with words that are not my own in my throat.
These words
fuse a crystal
of light
to warm our shoulders
across the realms.
Chip,
chip,
thunk.
After the carnage,
I breathe out
without the secrets, the lies,
for once.
(Previously published in Not Ghosts But Spirits vol. II by Querencia Press)
Violeta Garza is a Latinx poet and artist from San Antonio, TX. Her debut poetry chapbook Brava was a semifinalist for the 2023 Nine Syllables Press Chapbook Contest, and will be released in September 2025 by First Matter Press. She never fully trained her tongue to roll her R's. You can peruse her work at violetagarza.com or on Instagram: @violeta.poeta.
