Teresa, our Mexican neighbor,
climbs our porch steps on arthritic legs,
carrying a plate of fresh tamales,
still warm, wrapped in cloth,
because they're having a cookout in their yard
with all the tias and grandbabies,
and we're included in the golden circle
of familia, through no virtue
of our own, yet here she is again at our door
with a plate of something delicious, or a big plastic bag
filled with nopales from the edible pads
of the giant cactus in their yard
which she has skinned and cubed and boiled
in salted water. They are slippery as okra
and tart as lemons, and she swears they will cure
a long list of ailments, including
but not limited to cancer, high blood pressure,
diabetes ... standing on our porch, leaning
against the railing, she enumerates
the benefits while I smile and nod, "Si, si, gracias ..."
My friend who lives in a rich neighborhood
says she's seen ICE patrolling, looking for gardeners
and maids escaping over the back fences of Marin.
They're tearing families apart like clumps
of seedlings, uprooting whole delicate
ecosystems, but what they don't
understand is the mycelian nature
of kinship, how love is a weed
that travels across borders in a bird's belly
and pops up waving its arms, no matter the law.
Our block resounds with spangled mariachi tunes
all summer long, and I'd be lying if I said
I wasn't jealous some evenings,
lying awake while the parties go on all around us,
because this land is their land, and their devotion
is tough and wild and joyous and Teresa can't read
the red card that says Know Your Rights
in English and Spanish that I gave her, nor understand
how to make a living, but she knows
what to do with the leaves of the guava tree
growing along our driveway, whose leaves
are medicinal in dozens of ways – whose leaves,
like the Bible says, are given for the healing of nations.
"Los Vecinos" by Alison Luterman,
reprinted with permission of the author.
Alison Luterman is a prize winning poet and playwright. As a young woman, she worked with Haitian refugees in Boston as a VISTA volunteer. After moving to the West Coast, she served as an HIV counselor at San Francisco General Hospital. According to her artist's statement, "Since 2000, Alison has taught Memoir and Poetry through The Writing Salon in Berkeley, California, as well as at Esalen and Omega Institutes, at the Great Mother Conference, and at poetry festivals and conferences around the country. She lives in a rambling old house in Oakland where she tries and fails to keep the cat from clawing the couch, and writes poems, essays, plays, and song lyrics."
Her next book, coming out next month from Wildhouse Publishing, is titled Hard Listening. "Los Vecinos" will be included in her Selected and New, forthcoming from Mayapple Press in 2026, to be titled Praise the Broken Promise of America.
Visit her website at alisonluterman.net for more of her poems or to request a private consultation or personal coaching with writing.
