Isidro Zepeda

Isidro Zepeda is a father to two beautiful children and husband to a wonderful woman. His family is his dream, vision, and focus. All creativity emerges from this fireplace. For Isidro, creativity is his nature. He has always created and had a profound need to create. Over the years, he has deleted, burned, or gifted (only to my family) mostly all his poetry, short stories, and artwork; however, during the pandemic he discovered a different purpose: to share perhaps at a much greater scale his expressions/interpretations of our shared realities.

Poem I: “My Father’s Dreams” 

On the wrinkled skin of these letters, blisters of my father’s hands conceal his truth. 

Perhaps not a universal truth, but one that smells like mountains and wet earth. 

They remember releasing birds from their cages at the maestros’ house and selling tortas at the plaza. 

They remember tying snakes from their tails near trees where people took naps to laugh for a brief moment. 

I remember asking him one day, “Dad, did you ever dream as a kid?” 

“No, there was no time for childish things,” he said. 

Although he did not remember, his story was nestled in the mud. 

The brown vibrations of his hands and feet connecting with the earth, as he picked strawberries, were recorded in the stars. 

It was an ancient relationship ennewed with his labor. 

Fields of wet earth witnessed an unspoken prayer. 

The drumbeat of his heart echoed in my vision, and I hunted futures. 

With gratitude, I arrived at the sacred temples with offerings. 

Con un chocolate Abuelita. 

(With an Abuelita chocolate). 

Con mi ojo de venado. 

(With my deer eye). 

Inside springs carved in stone, I listened to my father’s dreams. 

I told him everything was going to be alright. I was a witness to dreams he had not lived.

Embers under his blisters composed my physical reality. 

The atoms of his dreams resonate within the landscapes of my soul, and I walk on the earth he harvested. 

Poem II: “Blue Deer”

Your eyes open the infinite eyes. 

Bitterness strings ancient realities like rainbowed diamonds. 

Ribbons flower from your crown—they thread seven generational fireplaces. 

His murmurs move like a serpent made of maize. 

Each plane dives into another while the blue deer grazes and sleeps. 

Just as a bee buzzes these words are composed. 

There is no secret when art is in your nature.