Mora, was a housekeeper. Pat Mora grew up in
El Paso, attended Catholic schools, and she
received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Texas
Western College in 1963. That year she married
William H. Burnside Jr., with whom she had
three children; the couple divorced in 1981.
She then attended the same college, earning
herMasterofArtsinEnglishin1967,theyear
that the school changed its name to University
of Texas at El Paso. Mora taught English at El
Paso Community College as a part-time instruc-
tor until 1978 and then for a few years at Uni-
versity of Texas at El Paso. After teaching
there for two years, she became an assistant
to the vice president of academic affairs, work-
ing in that capacity from 1981 to 1988. She
hosted the radio programVoices: The Mexican-
American in Perspectiveon the El Paso National
Public Radio affiliate from 1983 to 1984. She was
the director of the University of Texas museum
and assistant to the president for one term
(1988–1989). Then she moved to Cincinnati,
Ohio, and began making her living as full-time
awriter.
Mora’s first book of poetry,Chants,was
published in 1984, which is the year that she
remarried, this time to archeologist Vernon Lee
Scarborough. It was followed in 1986 byBorders,
the book that brought her to national attention
after she won the Southwest Book Award. Her
subsequent publications led to a series of awards
and honors, including a membership on the Ohio
Arts Council panel in 1990; membership on the
advisory committee for the Kellogg National
Foundation Program from 1991 through 1994;
the Garry Carruthers Distinguished Visiting
Professor at the University of New Mexico in
1999; and a fellowship in Umbria, Italy, in 2003.
In 2000, she helped establish the Estela and Rau ́
Mora Award, in honor of her parents, to pro-
mote family literacy.
In addition to her poetry for adult readers,
Mora has authored over two dozen children’s
books since 1992, for which she has won numer-
ous awards, including the Ohioana Award for
Children’s Literature in 2000 and the Golden
Kite Award in 2006. In 1996, Mora proposed
that the annual Mexican tradition ofEl Dia de
las ninas(Day of the Children) be expanded to
includeEl Dia de las libras(Day of the Book);
the combined Children’s Day/Book Day is now
celebrated annually on April 30.
Poem Summary
With thorns, she scratches
on my window, tosses her hair dark with rain,
snares lightning, cholla, hawks, butterfly
swarms in the tangles.
She sighs clouds, 5
head thrown back, eyes closed, roars
and rivers leap,
boulders retreat like crabs
into themselves.
She spews gusts and thunder, 10
spooks pale women who scurry to
lock doors, windows
when her tumbleweed skirt starts its spin.
They sing lace lullabies
so their children won’t hear 15
her uncoiling
through her lips, howling
leaves off trees, flesh
off bones, until she becomes
sound, spins herself 20
to sleep, sand stinging her ankles,
whirring into her raw skin like stars.Poem Text
Stanza 1
The poem begins with references to an unknown
woman who seems to be scratching at the nar-
rator’s window with thorns. The fact that she is
scratching the window rather than knocking or
even tapping on it suggests the person is too
timid to ask for admission, even though it is
raining.
By the poem’s third line, it becomes clear that
the speaker is not describing literally what she sees
outside the window. She describes the other person
as having a wide variety of odd things in her hair.
Lightning might just be reflected in the shine of wet
hair, but she also describes the hair as containing
cholla (a kind of cactus) and hawks. The last two
identify the poem’s setting as the desert.
The last line of the first stanza helps soften
the reader’s idea of the person being described.
While she was associated with thorns at the start,
by line 4 she is associated with butterflies that are
caught within her web of influence.Stanza 2
The woman outside metaphorically sighs clouds,
suggesting some sort of meteorological event.Uncoiling