"The Box of the Archeologist" by Elizabeth Ross

Sonrisa de porcelana,
vasija del presente
distante
sobre calles
de polvo mundial

Gritos blancos,
de naciones desnudas,
desunidas,
purificadas mil veces
hasta los huesos

Agua sobre piedras
de sandías,
jugo escurriéndose
hacia siglos rojos
del mar

Esteros
por donde corren
semillas negras
de aretes de plata,
caballos azules
de caminos
sordos

Niños condenados
en una tierra árida
como almas de muñecas
quebradas,
desviadas
en alambres de espinas

She is a smile, a vessel of a present
past on streets of global dust. She shouts

of naked nations disunited, purified
a million times to the bone. She strokes

oval rocks of green melons, dripping
juices into red centuries of the sea. She leaps

along beaches on turquoise horses, selling
black seeds of silver earrings soldered on deafened roads. She drifts

in this arid land like bruised souls of porcelain dolls
strapped to chain link fences.

El Porvenir, Baja California, October 2002

Bio: As a career teacher, Judith spent four years teaching English, French, and music at the American School of Algiers, Algeria, and then ten years teaching writing at California State University, Los Angeles. Her poems have appeared in The San Gabriel Valley Poetry Quarterly and in the anthology, An Eye for an Eye Makes the Whole World Blind: Poets on 9/11. She is the author of a chapbook, Shiny Things Make Things Come Back (2002) and a forthcoming collection, Lightning Bugs Don't Travel Westward. She currently teaches French language and literature at Polytechnic School in Pasadena, California, where she resides with her artist husband.

Contact Judith Terzi at jbkt@earthlink.net