María De La Tierra

Yaccaira Salvatierra

[With a little help, everyone walks through a forest                 to reach the Ocean.]A third mother walks into a forest                 near the Northern Pacific Ocean.                 Along the way, she sees treesdecorated in eyes. She recognizes a pair of eyes,                 irises the color of translucent browntree resin. She must leave them there to be found                 by their owner.She smells the tree resin. With a thin branch,                 she scrapes sap onto a flat leaf & walkstowards the shore to burn the resin, her feet                 touching the swash. Those who have losttheir sight will follow the smell,                 claim their eyes back into their sockets.

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Headshot of Yaccaira Salvatierra

Yaccaira Salvatierra’s debut poetry collection, Sons of Salt, published by BOA Editions, was deemed one of the “Best Books for Adults 2024” by the New York Public Library. She has been a contributing poetry editor for Huizache and lives in Oakland, where she teaches literacy and poetry to youth.

“Sons of Salt holds the memories of water and of fire—those forces in ourselves and the world that are best at transformation. These poems contend with the tensions of form and formlessness, place and displacement, generations of family and regeneration. They keep dreaming their way back to the lessons we learned about ourselves and each other in the shadows of home.”
— Traci Brimhall, Poet Laureate of Kansas

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