lovers in the fields
“have you heard about the Agriculture Department’s financial grants to lesbian farmers? ...I never knew that lesbians wanted to get behind the horse and the plow and start burrowing. I never knew it. but apparently enough money can make it happen, and the objective here is to attack — they’re already attacking suburbs, and that has been made perfectly clear by what happened in Milwaukee. and they’re going after every geographic region that is known to be largely conservative. they never stop, folks.”
Rush Limbaugh, 2016
in the weeks after Rush’s body was interred at Bellefontaine Cemetery, I heard his voice telling me to avoid the backroads, to keep to my rainbow painted suburban streets and dirty alleyways of the city. my father lives further south than Rush would’ve ever dared to go, crossing cacti littered borders and a river that’s claimed so many lives before. my father’s a farmer with saguaro shoulders, suntanned skin, and dirt still stuck in the crevices of his nails. his hands are rough and strong, solid and soothing. he told me once that the earth will give back as good as it’s got mija, sólo tienes que entregarte a esto. I’d give the earth back what she’s given me, but Rush’s words still echo in my brain, telling me that no matter what my heritage tells me, my body belongs to men and their opinions.
to the woman I want to marry, I spin something soft out of something sour. lemons to lemon bars.
our cattle on cud do. we
will grow children from
the vine, ruddy like your
slippery strawberries and small
like my delicate blackberries.
when our children let the dogs
out too early and dirty up
the sheets with glittering smiles
and mud stains, they will be yours.
when they pick bluebells and
speedwells and place them
in my mother’s beat-up wicker
basket, they will be mine. and
when we read books to them
in two different languages
as they struggle to keep their
eyes open with the moonrise,
they will be ours. we’ll gift
them friends in dogs, cats,
and goats, but only if they whisper
the air of their names, swift or
small, slow or strong,
to us beforehand.
here’s to a vow that I will
tear down signs that tell
us we are worth less than
the mud we track onto
the porch after the spring
rains. I will be your lover
in the fields, wheat or wildflower,
as long as you are there
I should want for not.
I will build you a stable
should you prepare a roost
for our chickens to find
a home. we will find dirt
under our nails, chipped
and dry, but still soft where
they meet one another. we
will grind berries into jam
to spread across our toast as
we contemplate how we can
begin to forgive. we will chew
on thyme and wait it out to see
what it will be like when
the sun rises again, the same way