Poem

May Everything Flower

Que Florezca Todo
May Everything Flower
– Roberto Lopez Moreno

What bitter memories lie dormant
in the earth. We are surely not innocent
of the ghosts at Tlatelolco or roaming the streets
of Chile and valleys of Colombia.

There is an empty space in our brain where the rest
of our body should be, an empty lot where nothing
grows, not even disdain or arrogance.

Nothing.

Beneath that lot lies the School of the Americas,
the KUBARK manual, and the directives of Henry Kissinger.
Lies paramilitaries and electroshock machines
and, collaborating with all of that, willful ignorance.

And Whiteness in the roots – a parasite that keeps
us alive while it eats us.

May everything flower –

even the memories that may accuse us,
might broil in our stomachs, catch in our throats,
might burn into the empty space in our brain,
might wrest us with the responsibility
to pay attention and destroy what pretends
to serve us – border walls and mass-produced fear.

Que florezca todo.

Todo.

About Liliana Torpey

Liliana Torpey was born in Berkeley, CA and grew up in Oakland. She is curious about themes of identity, history, and personal and collective healing. Liliana has performed street theater in the Tijuana/San Diego Borderland and has trained in Theater of the Oppressed at the Center for Theater of the Oppressed in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She has also published articles in Prospect, Journal of International Affairs at UCSD. Liliana received her B.A. in International Studies: Literature from UC San Diego.

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