Born in San Francisco, Lorna Dee Cervantes was raised in San José, California, a 40-minute ride down the valley on what’s now I-280. Her childhood was difficult—family split up, alcoholic mother, inhospitable environment both landscape and human. Her grandmother, of Chumash descent, was where she turned for love and support. Cervantes got a degree from San José State, then went on to study at UC Santa Cruz. She’s considered a major figure in Chicanx literature; she often expresses the confusion of living between two cultures by flowing between Spanish and English in her poems, as evidenced by today’s entry for National Poetry Month.
The San José neighborhood in which Cervantes grew up was razed to
build I-280, a freeway that twice a weekday doubles as a parking lot between the South Bay and San Francisco. Here she revisits the area and reflects on survival and
flourishing in the face of a dominant culture with bulldozers and concrete.
“Freeway 280”
Las casitas near the gray cannery,
nestled amid wild abrazos of climbing roses
and man-high red geraniums
are gone now. The freeway conceals it
all beneath a raised scar.
But under the fake windsounds of the open lanes,
in the abandoned lots below, new grasses sprout,
wild mustard remembers, old gardens
come back stronger than they were,
trees have been left standing in their yards.
Albaricoqueros, cerezos, nogales . . .
Viejitas come here with paper bags to gather greens.
Espinaca, verdolagas, yerbabuena . . .
I scramble over the wire fence
that would have kept me out.
Once, I wanted out, wanted the rigid lanes
to take me to a place without sun,
without the smell of tomatoes burning
on swing shift in the greasy summer air.
Maybe it's here
en los campos extraños de esta ciudad
where I'll find it, that part of me
mown under
like a corpse
or a loose seed.
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