Chameleon
or Now I Love Green
Rearing a garden bed becomes my undoing—
Newark native, Bronx bred girl
now wrapping myself in green,
I peel away the soft concrete stuck
to the soles of my sneaks, I’m unglued
from the streets and run the night with peach trees
standing firm, limbs raised to dark skies like a fist.
Roses unfurling, my deepest regret—not learning
how to carry a flower without thorny breaks in my skin.
I should have paid closer attention to
my mother sliding between stems and stalks,
a panther on the prowl.
When I’m knee-deep in soil,
I wonder if any foliage will sprout
from the young sapling before me and ask,
can the inheritance of a perfect sage thumb skip a daughter?
My grandmother started it all—the pots & rich dirt beds,
her voice calling down rivers of island water,
the chilling way blossoms opened at her caress,
how she easily lulled weeds away.
I once insisted on tuning into thumping bass beats
pouring through my headphones, and these days
I listen for bulging peonies in palm.
Not that you can’t have both.
And some might say I now love green
because gray hairs rooted themselves on my head.
I would say, the earth beneath me believed I could care for it.
One day you’ll find ripe mangoes rolling around
my Jersey backyard and think—
she made so much damn magic with this land.
Newark native, Bronx bred girl
now wrapping myself in green,
I peel away the soft concrete stuck
to the soles of my sneaks, I’m unglued
from the streets and run the night with peach trees
standing firm, limbs raised to dark skies like a fist.
Roses unfurling, my deepest regret—not learning
how to carry a flower without thorny breaks in my skin.
I should have paid closer attention to
my mother sliding between stems and stalks,
a panther on the prowl.
When I’m knee-deep in soil,
I wonder if any foliage will sprout
from the young sapling before me and ask,
can the inheritance of a perfect sage thumb skip a daughter?
My grandmother started it all—the pots & rich dirt beds,
her voice calling down rivers of island water,
the chilling way blossoms opened at her caress,
how she easily lulled weeds away.
I once insisted on tuning into thumping bass beats
pouring through my headphones, and these days
I listen for bulging peonies in palm.
Not that you can’t have both.
And some might say I now love green
because gray hairs rooted themselves on my head.
I would say, the earth beneath me believed I could care for it.
One day you’ll find ripe mangoes rolling around
my Jersey backyard and think—
she made so much damn magic with this land.
Newark, NJ, native, Ysabel Y. Gonzalez, received her BA from Rutgers University, an MFA in Poetry from Drew University and works as the Assistant Director for the Poetry Program at the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. Ysabel has received invitations to attend VONA, Tin House, Ashbery Home School and BOAAT Press workshops. She’s a CantoMundo Fellow and has been published in Paterson Literary Review; Tinderbox Journal; Anomaly; Vinyl; Waxwing Literary Journal, and others. She is the author of Wild Invocations (Get Fresh Book, 2019).
Art: Public Domain