And They Called It Horizon: Santa Fe Poems

By Valerie Martinez

During her two-year tenure as Santa Fe’s Poet Laureate, award-winning poet Valerie Martínez appeared at over 50 public events—in schools, museums, cafés, galleries; in public parks and local banks and libraries; for children, youth, adults, and families. While traversing the city, she wrote about it—occasional poems, meditations, narratives, lyric poems that capture the present and past of the capital city and its people, all collected here, in this volume. The title poem imagines the creation of the land and its people and unfolds forward to the present. “Blue Winding, Blue Way” watches the Santa Fe River as it threads through the city. “History, Apology” tries to grapple with complex issues of history and race, and “Days Like This” captures the whimsy and resonance of the annual Pet Parade. There is a poem for everyone in this book, and those who love Santa Fe (residents and visitors, alike) will trace the city’s streets as they read, find themselves at familiar street corners and buildings, and navigate the historical, cultural and social issues that lie at the center of community life. Drawings by Linda Swanson (whose work is in the permanent collections of The Brooklyn Museum and The Newark Museum) accompany the poems and capture the tenderness and beauty of families. VALERIE MARTINEZ is the author of four books of poetry and one book of translations (selected poems of Uruguay’s Delmira Agustini). Her poems have appeared widely in journals, anthologies and magazines. She was the Poet Laureate for the City of Santa Fe from March 2008 to March 2010.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sunstone Press
• Release date: Aug 18, 2011
• ISBN: 9781611390209

Book preview

Part One

Blue Winding, Blue Way

I tell you, City, City, City, a story you told me—brown eyes, green eyes, black—in the days of snow drifts, mini-skirts, nothing beyond Richards Ave. The center of earth was a patch of land, our house, a back yard, the arroyo humming over the reddish concrete wall, and one immortal turtle. The neighbor’s immense ham radio antenna and Mr. Chang hunched to static and metal under the morning buzz of Osage Ave. We went to school in sedans, in dented station wagons, and on weekends workmen showed up to build vigas for the new den that swelled our home—so many children—Alfonso saying, mi linda, get me that bucket and ¿donde está tu mama? Me saying, at the grocery store, buying tubs of ice cream, you know, those big ones? Get me, ice cream, you know took to the air over the rooftops spilling toward Frenchy’s Field. We weren’t supposed to play there—he’ll shoot, you know—and I imagined the old man hunched somewhere near the water, listening. In those days the Santa Fe River ran and sang. It’s true? you ask, staring at the empty bed, dust rising at the dead end of Avenida Cristobal Colón. There was water? Now, we dream of blue winding, blue way along West Alameda—barbershop, coop, health clinic. The clog and cough of St. Francis Drive. Back then there were cars and wanderers and children just like now—towheads, dark braids, dirty cuffs—rolled up with all of us on the days of markets and parades along San Francisco and Palace Ave. Hmmm went the setting sun and you really could get fry bread for a quarter after walking down Washington Street from Fort Marcy after Zozobra burned. Now I drive downtown where the acequia crosses Closson and Maynard, stutters along Water Street, and sings the parallels of East Alameda and Canyon Road. Like a whisper, it lays itself down between Camino del Monte Sol and Camino Cabra, two streets with the river in-between—one with her skirt trailing southwest to the Paseo Real, the other reaching her fingernail moons to the foothills. And the river itself, dream of p’oe tsawa, flushed from the red burn of the Sangres, running headlong downhill into this city of ours, then and now, with her canciónes encantadas, with her blue, with her brown mouth open.

Santa Fe Sestina

Late autumn blows leaves into women’s hair. On the plaza,

Lydia feeds the pigeons—iridescent feathers gone blue

in the tangerine sun. It is afternoon and adobe,

crush of pueblo-style hotel rooms against a sky

that holds them steady. Her skirt is wound in ribbons,

gathered in ruffles, wind-flipped velvet, black and silver.

Merrymakers tumble from the doors of La Fonda,