Rebekah Bloyd

Rebekah Bloyd’s creative non-fiction, translations, and poems have appeared in Harper’s, Poetry,
The Cincinnati Review, Catamaran, and elsewhere. At Sea, her most recent collection, features life in
Venezuela, the West Indies, and in California, places where she’s worked, lived, loved, and walked the shifting shore. Rebekah makes her home in San José and makes her commute to San Francisco, where she teaches at California College of the Arts.

Mother and Son at Home, Mérida, Venezuela

Among his Lego blocks
scattered on a patio,
fingerlings flash and dart,

regroup, then snap minuscule
red and blue scutes onto the back
of an armored Titanosaur, a giant herbivore

who would not swap the constant spring
of Mérida’s valley, the sparkling shallows
hung with afternoon shadows

for the snowcapped
Espejo, Bonpland, Bolívar, and Humboldt,

ceramic bowls turned upside
down. He shivers at the thought.

“Mijo, do you have to finish the creature
outside?”

“Mamá, it’s nearly alive.”