Ofrendas for Grandpa Poet Ruth Nakamura recalls memories of New Mexico and artfully describes her ofrenda to her grandfather. WORDS BY RUTH NAKAMURA
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HE PICTURE IS black and white. Its plain black frame encloses the sixties, and the setting is the dust of New Mexico, in the juniper winds of spring, the sneezing breezes of their pollen-scattering rituals. In the juniper hills of El Rito, up north, in its cottonwood-studded valleys and red earth, John Martinez, my grandpa, stands in front of the old adobe home, with its wooden door frames and blackened windows, its cracks like spider legs creeping up the sides. The car is barely in the picture, a
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curve of metal, a smooth light color, like the enlarged shell of a Jordan almond. He stands in front of it, with a jacket heavy enough for a northern spring. A fedora is perched on his head, of some sun-bleached color, and his long eyes, staring into the lens, squint against the sun, his brows pushed together. He is not smiling, and he is not unhappy. He lets the photographer, my dad, in his late twenties, take his photo; he lets himself be captured so that he can hang on my wall, decades later, in honor of a man I knew for
