Zero, 2018 — Blackbird Archive

← v18n2, Fall 2019

Keep saying what you saw and before you are sore

I will sing, and before I am parched, another.

Sing cero, cero, cero.

the way it grew crowded

and transformed from cement floors

and crinkled, silver blankets

into many, distant rooms.

Cero for the mourning O of outrage,

for the empty shell drawn first to signify an accounted nothingness,

for the meaningless words and hurried signatures

on bright white pages.

immigration politics displacement

Jacqueline Balderrama

Jacqueline Balderrama is the author of the chapbook Nectar and Small (Finishing Line Press 2019), and serves as poetry editor for Iron City Magazine and co-poetry editor for Quarterly West . She is the recipient of a 2019 Intro Journal Award and the 2012–13 Ina Coolbrith Memorial Poetry Prize for individual poems. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Hayden ’ s Ferry Review , Miramar Magazine , and New Ohio Review . She is a PhD candidate in literature and creative writing at the University of Utah. Photo by Jesus Huerta Jr.