(Or Triste at the Santa Barbara Sea Center)
Maybe it was the quiet desperation of the
sea horse, holding on to a spine of sea grass
inside a cobalt blue aquarium that brought it on.
Or perhaps the distressed Stingray flicking
a missing tail, as the frantic hands of a big- eyed girl
stroked its spine now smoothed by captivity.
Nothing is sadder than a creature trapped in mid-flight.
She thought. Whatever it was. It was enough to
remind her of her own meaningless
gestures towards freedom. And though it didn’t
make her weep any longer, it underscored
a shift in the weather.
Rumblings of thunder on a monsoon day
at the Port of Legazpi. Where her
missing heart is pitched.
Cynthia T. Buiza
Cynthia Buiza is the former Executive Director of the California Immigrant Policy Center (CIPC). She worked in war zones in Southeast Asia before migrating to the United States 20 years ago. Her poems and essays have appeared in Tayo Magazine, West Trestle Review, Migozine, Halo-Halo Review, Chopstick Alley, Marsh Hawk Press,thePhilippine Daily Inquirer Sunday Magazine, and various anthologies in the United States and the Philippines. In 2003, she co-authored a book called Anywhere but War, published by the Refugee Studies Center at Oxford University and the Jesuit Refugee Service. Her debut poetry collection, The Future Is a Country I Do Not Live in, was released by Paloma Press in August 2022. She lives in Los Angeles, California.
