Marta Alvarado, History Professor

I In September beyond the breezes and the smoke when autumn unveils its fiery shell, I think of you fragile and severe, small and immense II You were a traveler through demented and subtle geographies with your magic wand singing about Yugoslavia and Lebanon Chile and Peru —Those details on imaginary sheets, doubtful you would get lost because true history was made by women the girl-women and the old women. III When the children of war become a nebulous flame when the earth's shell is a shawl afire with gold, I name you, Marta Alvarado, arriving almost at dawn with your bony woolen gloves to open the school's doors and the defiance of your notebook.