Salima Rivera, born in Santa Isabel, Puerto Rico, in 1946 and raised in Chicago, embraced contradictions. Throughout her life, she assumed various names—Salima, Sulima, Sula, Sal—and embraced multiple roles, including poet, cook, feminist, activist, institution-builder, and mother.
A BUMPER CROP
Salima Rivera
Words, like weeds,
are sprouting everywhere.
My mouth and throat are choked with them,
wild fairy rings waiting to be gathered and dried.
I pick through them and press them between
sheets of cheap paper,
stuff them into envelopes
and mail them out
to anyone who’ll have them.
I’m running out of space.
My kitchen drawers, closets, file cabinets
are overflowing with words,
spilling into every nook and cranny
of the house.
Sell them, my friends say, sell them.
Finely shred them and steep them in deep mugs
to make intoxicating brews
or tamp them into exotic pipes
and smoke them to induce
psychotic visions.
No, I say.
Socrates sipped a tea like this
and look what happened to him.
The D.E.A. may bust me for
illegal trafficking.
This harvest of verbiage
has grown out of hand.
What I need is a drought
so I can winnow out the chaff,
storing the remaining grain
for the famines to come.