“When the weeds take over, we don’t expect them”—
So begins Sara Camhaji’s “Undergrowth,” a poem whose speaker listens to and speaks with the natural world; and considers the spirit, intent, and even identity of plants growing nearby. What distinguishes weeds from the plants we grow from chosen seeds? First, our own meaning-making and act of naming. In Sara Camhaji’s poems, the speaker’s worldview encompasses the plants’ power and authority over human ways–she writes: “As if the weeds had put us to sleep / and then wakened another part of us.” The speaker suggests that even as we name plants, they enliven an unnamed part of us. We might attempt to influence them and their appearance, yet we are influenced by them—their world(s) always touching, challenging and reshaping our own.
Camhaji writes directly, yet with cosmic speculations and intuitions woven into the material and mundane. Her speakers seem to hover beside their relational worlds, filtering concrete images through ideas of spirit and memory. Or is it the other way—that questions of spirit are filtered through the concrete? Or is it that the concrete world and what is of spirit are always collapsing into each other and rendering themselves inextricably linked? If there are mysteries and riddles in Camhaji’s poems, they exist to be enjoyed and let be.
Each poem Camhaji offers contains its own matrilineal mythology. Each world is defined unto the speaker alone, and yet the entirety of the worlds Camhaji creates are realized through a universal fact of continuity—as in “37 Questions to 38 Answers”—from grandmother to mother to daughter. “No timeline starts from zero,” Camhaji writes, suggesting that for better or worse, we are never alone, and our realities are inherited, not made. And yet, she writes, “Every line can become a zero”: Our realities also exist to be remade.
These poems are new and previously unpublished translations from the Spanish, translated by the poet. Moment is honored to present them.
Maura Pellettieri is a writer and editor from New York State. She writes and teaches at intersections of ecofuturism, contemporary art, queerness, and Jewish experience and identity. Her writing can be found in The Kenyon Review, Conjunctions, The Literary Review, Guernica, Denver Quarterly, On The Seawall, Adroit, Ayin, and others.
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Undergrowth
When the weeds take over, we don’t expect them
we expect the seeds to sprout,
the ones we planted
we expect them to grow right there,
to grow and grow
In the common air
of the common planet
this is the grass
it grows wherever water is
and where there’s soil, its seed hides
in twined roots, stays
silent
Until one day it sprouts, rises,
multiplies
and by encompassing so much, the known world
turns invisible
As if the weeds had put us to sleep
and then wakened another part of us
Then we consider new cardinal points:
counting their leaves
spelling out their bitterness
holding them without getting stung
we whisper names to them,
we conjure them,
we breathe our longings into them like amulets
and keep them
or not,
limit ourselves to taking inventory of their presence:
eradication, effectiveness, pesticide
___
Never more beginning or end
we’ll go into the fields, I’ll take off my disguise
and ask you to blow the seeds away
you’ll think of three wishes when just
the stalk is left
—may you get well
—may it be over
—may there be many dandelions ahead
where some have seen dandelions
and clover, others only weeds
___
37 Questions to 38 Answers
1. No timeline starts from zero
2. I, for example, was born on the edge of midnight: 00:00 PM
3. When the zodiac changes,
the constellations do not fade away
4. In their most elegant version,
when one appears,
the other leaves its trace
5. I have always said
I was born on the edge, ruled by
both Aquarius and Pisces.
Delimitation does not represent me
6. Someone told me
that to properly read an astral chart
you need to know your own mother’s
at the moment you were born
7. You are not a mushroom born
from asexual spores
8. My mother was Mary,
the Jewish woman with green eyes
and highlights in her hair,
the crooked smile,
the goosebumps
9. I was not born in Paris
I was brought by the stork
or was it a seagull?
10. I’m thrifty like my Grandma:
she rubbed herself dry
with a a single hand towel
11. “That is more than enough”, she used to say
as she jammed another towel into the closet
12. My grandmother didn’t teach me to save time
like pennies.
13. No, it wasn’t a stork or a seagull,
it was a crane,
an origami
14. Mary,
everyone’s mother, mother of her son
she bore me at thirty-one
15. My mother, mother of all
you left at thirty-nine
with garlands, her hair still perfect
16. Now I realize you never
rode a convertible
and let your hair loose
across the streets of Paris
17. When I was a daughter
I never knew a window
that wasn’t a geometric figure
18. We were going to have a third daughter
pearly scales
pink flesh
from swimming
so hard against the flow
19. Nayram in her oceans
of distance between algae
on rocks, without sand
20. Come closer to the window, Maryan
I’ll read your palm
21. You rise above the stars
in freshwater tides
with silky tablecloths
you pour me tea and feed me oranges
22. You insist on staying
That I should have some tea
with condensed milk
23. When I invoke you, I challenge
the angels, I stop my prayers
As they stop theirs
24. Goodbye, Maryan, let’s laugh
and cry and
cry and cry
and laugh, goodbye
25. The bedroom where I write
is also where I sleep:
a birdcage of rectangles,
crystals in a little box
26. From this birdcage I hear
the sparks of the saw on beams,
the purring of tow trucks
27. I am the girl who watches
28. She turns the frame and watches
what’s happening inside, between the glass panes:
the girl makes sand rain
29. Grain by grain, it forms
a still untraveled landscape
in the hallway of the store
30. There’s something hypnotic:
the landscape taking shape
the dropped frame breaking
31. Glass shatters. Ma’am,
we’ve come to collect
what’s been broken
32. There should be insurance for breakages
33. If I’m paying for it, I’m taking it with me:
the frame, the shards,
every speck of dust
34. Can I borrow a dustpan
and a bag? I told you:
no touching!
35. Everything can be fixed except death:
which is not the end of life
36. Like in the rotating frame
that forms landscapes of sand
37. No timeline starts from zero
Every line can become a zero
___
Foundational Myths
Since I was a child, I’ve been told that I stare fixedly at spiderwebs. It’s true, I observe them against the light, looking for some trapped insect to empathize with. Most of the time, they are only leaves or dew drops, or dirt.
Since I was a child, I’ve been told that my favorite color is orange. No one knows that I can even smell it, that orange droplets enter through my retina. Its neon lights as they’re dispersed electrify me.
Since I was a child, I’ve been told about my transitional object: some kind of beverage. From breast to bottle, from glass to cup. From white milk to black coffee.
Since I was a child, I’ve been told that I look for my silhouette in crowds, that I challenge it motionless. When days are long and shadows, short. Perhaps that’s why I try to saturate my schedule.
Since I was a child, I’ve been told that I like fruit-flavored desserts. Lemon ice cream, apricot cake with chocolate, strawberry tart topped with whipped cream, banana milkshakes, caramel-coated apples.
Since I was a child, I’ve been told that I am drawn to fungi. Scattered through the grass or in wet wood. In old cabinets. Between the crevices of my toenails.
Since I was a child, I’ve been told I was drawn to germination projects. Inside a jar, a bean in damp cotton. In a tied stocking, sawdust with lentils. Fermented milk dripping from a piece of cheese cloth. An embryo in the ripe womb. In a lymph node, a tumor.
Since I was a child, I’ve been told I’m drawn to circles: bubbles, balloons, carousels, bellies, ribbons, vipers, the sun, death.
Since I was a child, I’ve been told that I seek water: to drink, to swim, to listen. Fire beckons me: ovens, campsites, relationships, funerals.
Since I was a child, I’ve been told that I like spirals: in old telephones, in spiral-bound notebooks, in hair, in bead necklaces, in rattlesnake sheds.
Since I was a child, I’ve been told that steps are ruins, framed diplomas, succession or descent.
Since I was a child,
I’ve been told a bunch of lies.
Sara Camhaji is a literary artist, a poet and educator from Mexico City. She is the author of two books: undergrowth (Maleza, Alboroto Ediciones 2022), an illustrated poem that uses metaphors related to the unexpected pangs of decay and longing, and, Don´t take photographs of the landscape, take portraits and, if you wish, throw in a background (Elefanta Editorial, 2023). This poetic device explores different genres and themes such as infancy, orphanhood, and loss. Sara´s poetic voice embraces fragmented narrations, hybrid discourses and discontinuous episodes that endow an emotional dimension to specific settings. She was awarded with de Asylum arts grant (2018), and was an artist in residence for Peleh, at Berkeley California. Some of her poems have been published in Periodico de poesía UNAM, Ayin press, Diario Milenio.