Dolores

I see my grandmother
growing up in Watts.

She would be subjected to the
torture of the box, I see her
with the sparrow hair my grandmother did not comb,

I see
owl-eye 80s glasses she squints through. I hear
language, a Jackson Pollock-painting of Spanish/of English/of
Los Angeles-isms and

I see
the States
my grandmother wanted, believed in,
the histories she shed in order to be American, North American,

I see all her loss in Dolores, who I have never seen.

Dolores
in solitary confinement, Dolores
after solitary confinement, trying to navigate
Anaheim but always getting lost,
each street a new street, an old street.

Who can remember when the walls were the same for so long?

My grandmother worked the cash register
of my grandfather’s bodega—
her fingers
smelled like one-dollar bills, she knew the names
of the entire city of Downey,
each proud citizen
in a city made entirely of factory and concrete
she wanted to know
and uplift.

She believed in this, Chicana,
she believed she could be uplifted. To what?

“The brain is comprised of 100 billion cells, 500 trillion connections,”
a neuroscientist reports. “It is an organ of social function.
The brain needs to interact in the world.”

The neuroscientist would say my grandmother was stimulated by a
community.

Dolores, I wish you were not—
I can barely finish—
I am ashamed—

the stress of being alone can cause the brain
to malfunction, release hormones that
affect the hippocampus, which narrows our view
of the world forever.

The boxes are 6 × 9 feet.
Usually have no windows.
The inmates must stay in the boxes
for over 20 hours a day. Usually 22.
Sometimes 23.

In order to test
the effects
of the box on mice, one must receive
special permission from animal care orgs.

There is no special permission granted to humans.

My grandmother

sits in the back room of the bodega,
writing checks, counting checks,
signing her name the same:

opened
a checking account,
roasted
beef for dinners,

knew the birthdays
of everyone on her street.

Graduate students sat alone
in small chambers, being studied.
They dropped out due to hallucinations.

I talk to myself again.
I see stars on the concrete floor,

searching for an attic in the big
house my grandmother
raised her children in, finding

Easter

eggs she hid on the roof.
Doing the drugs
the teenagers did in her backyard.

“The neurons stop connecting.”

It occurs to me that I am American.

What would she

say, what would either
of these women who I—am I—hallucinating are one woman

what would they say?
If it wasn’t on an old Western or pinned to the bulletin
board in the back office it’s possible she would say nothing.

Luxury, check-writing, histories to burn and burn and burn.

This shame is a small thing I can swallow,
something to keep private in the morning.
I want a pill, a small and silver pill. A slow dissolve to make it go away.
The histories won’t stop calling from the grave.