West Trestle Review
  • Home
  • Current Issue
  • Past Issues
    • January 2023
    • November 2022
    • September 2022
    • July 2022
    • May 2022
    • March 2022
    • January 2022
    • November 2021
    • September 2021
    • July 2021
    • May 2021
    • March 2021
    • January 2021
    • November 2020
    • September 2020
    • July 2020
  • Cross-Ties
  • Silver Tongue Saturdays
  • About
    • Arrivals & Departures
    • Masthead
    • Submit
    • Join Our Team
    • Archive >
      • Jane Beal
      • Beverly Burch
      • Kathleen Gunton
      • Connie Gutowsky
      • Priscilla Lee
      • Irene Lipshin
  • Home
  • Current Issue
  • Past Issues
    • January 2023
    • November 2022
    • September 2022
    • July 2022
    • May 2022
    • March 2022
    • January 2022
    • November 2021
    • September 2021
    • July 2021
    • May 2021
    • March 2021
    • January 2021
    • November 2020
    • September 2020
    • July 2020
  • Cross-Ties
  • Silver Tongue Saturdays
  • About
    • Arrivals & Departures
    • Masthead
    • Submit
    • Join Our Team
    • Archive >
      • Jane Beal
      • Beverly Burch
      • Kathleen Gunton
      • Connie Gutowsky
      • Priscilla Lee
      • Irene Lipshin
Search by typing & pressing enter

YOUR CART

Jen Yáñez-Alaniz

Yohl Ik'nal as Seed, Flower, and Fruit

(My body heals from hunger)

Yohl Ik’nal, second self, born from crimson 
​pulse; you grow beyond my body, where I 
do not exist. I feel you when I crave. 
You savor what I cannot eat. You keep 
my bones guarded from despair. You hold my 
marrow sacred. By my mouth, you smother 
what destroys. You feed me as the famished, 
the displaced; the refugee. You nourish 
in me our grandmother, denied her land, 
her skin, her voice; sacred stone and water. 
You are my inheritance when I consume 
the seed, the flower, and the fruit. You know 
my lifted arms, my palms, my knees.
I eat — my throat grows a second womb
November / December 2022

Barbara Daniels
Jen Yáñez-Alaniz identifies as Chicanx, Mestiza. She advocates for human rights as a community organizer facilitating equity-driven cultural conversations focused on the preservation of language, language literacy, and food traditions. She is the co-creator of Loving, Grieving, & Surviving /Chicanas Read the Poetry of Healing and co-founder of Welcome: A Poetry Declaration. A Pushcart nominee for her work, "Matrilineal Poetics: Toward an Understanding of Corporeality and Identity is featured in Latinas in Hollywood Herstories." Her latest and forthcoming publications are included in The Journal of Latina Critical Feminism, Cutthroat: Puro Chicanx Writers of the 21st Century, South Dakota Review, Rogue Agent Journal, Mom Egg Review, and more.
Art: Flowers in a Creamcheese Glass. Oil on canvas. T. Aguilera.  
  
Powered by Women