Emplumada by Lorna Dee Cervantes
Emplumada
Lorna Dee CervantesWhen summer ended
the leaves of snapdragons withered
taking their shrill-colored mouths with them.
They were still, so quiet. They were
violet where umber now is. She hated
and she hated to see
them go. Flowersborn when the weather was good – this
she thinks of, watching the branch of peaches
daring their ways above the fence, and further,
two hummingbirds, hovering, stuck to each other,
arcing their bodies in grim determination
to find what is good, what is
given them to find. These are warriorsdistancing themselves from history.
They find peace
in the way they contain the wind
and are gone.
SELECTED BY FARNAZ FATEMI
I am so thankful for the poem ”Emplumada” by Lorna Dee Cervantes (which is the title poem for Cervantes’ first book). It’s a poem which has stayed with me since reading it over 30 years ago in a college lit class. At its essence, the poem bears witness to change: in plants, in seasons, in politics, in people. It also established for me the way poems reveal the impact of seemingly small things in the world—things like snapdragons and hummingbirds who love each other fiercely. And the obsessions of the poem are my own: a commitment to welcome change when it happens, a focus on connection and intimacy, the way the memory of joy can provide solace during darkness.
I love the lyric imagery that contains personal history. The “arcing…bodies in grim determination to find what is good” and the plaintive repetition: “she hated and she hated to see them go.” I love the sweep of history in the small scene here.
The book with the same title, Emplumada, transformed me, I’m sure. It included poetry rooted in a young woman’s local reality, imbued with the language of a Chicana upbringing in San Jose, California. Its poems didn’t apologize for their bilingualism or their subject matter. They walked through the pages because they belonged there. What a gift.
ABOUT FARNAZ FATEMI
Farnaz Fatemi is the former Santa Cruz County Poet Laureate, an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow, California Individual Artist Fellow, and author of the poetry collection, Sister Tongue زبان خواهر, recipient of a Publisher’s Weekly starred review. Her poems and essays appear in Alaska Quarterly, Kenyon Review, No Tokens Journal, Nowruz Journal, RHINO Poetry Journal, Tahoma Literary Review, Terrain.org, and elsewhere.
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SHARED WITH GRATITUDE
This poem appeared in Emplumada by Lorna Dee Cervantes, published by University of Pittsburgh Press, 1981. (Available on: Amazon • Bookshop)
DESCRIPTION
“Emplumada is Lorna Dee Cervantes’s first book, a collection of poems remarkable for their surface clarity, precision of image, and emotional urgency. Rooted in her Chicana heritage, these poems illuminate the American experience of the last quarter century and, at a time when much of what is merely fashionable in American poetry is recondite and exclusive, Cervantes has the ability to speak to and for a large audience.” (Source)
ABOUT LORNA DEE CERVANTES
Lorna Dee Cervantes was born on August 6, 1954, in San Francisco, and raised in San Jose, California. Cervantes is the author of several poetry collections, including Sueño: New Poems (Wings Press, 2013); Ciento: 100 100-Word Love Poems (Wings Press, 2011); From the Cables of Genocide: Poems on Love and Hunger (Arte Público Press, 1991) and Emplumada (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1981), which won an American Book Award. She is also a coeditor of Red Dirt and her work has been published… (more)
Read more poems by Lorna Dee Cervantes • Find books by this poet on Amazon • Bookshop • Or view my library
ENDNOTES
- This is Day 75 of Poems We Carry, celebrating the 20th anniversary of Read A Little Poetry—a living archive I’ve nurtured for two decades. For this milestone series, I invited writers I deeply admire to share poems that have meant something to them over time.
- Explore other works in pursuit of: transience • loss • nature • Or browse the index
- If this work resonates with you, please consider supporting the archive. Thank you for reading.
