Liliana Lopez

Liliana Lopez Jul 2017

Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper --Martín Espada

At sixteen, I worked after high school hours
at a printing plant
that manufactured legal pads:
Yellow paper
stacked seven feet high
and leaning
as I slipped cardboard
between the pages,
then brushed red glue
up and down the stack.
No gloves: fingertips required
for the perfection of paper,
smoothing the exact rectangle.
Sluggish by 9 PM, the hands
would slide along suddenly sharp paper,
and gather slits thinner than the crevices
of the skin, hidden.
Then the glue would sting,
hands oozing
till both palms burned
at the punchclock.

Ten years later, in law school,
I knew that every legal pad
was glued with the sting of hidden cuts,
that every open lawbook
was a pair of hands
upturned and burning.

Liliana Lopez Jul 2017

On Chastity

I do not rebel against you.
My faith is deep in my soul,
But, my Lord, I don't feel you
Anywhere...
Do you ever see me, hear me,
Do my cries ever make a ripple,
Even one, in the pool of Your infinity?

My mother, I do rebel.
How could I ever understand,
How could I ever hope
That you would see me?
The very air that stirs in my lungs
Even this is different from yours.
Please tell me why...

Am I defiled when I speak,
Or, have I sinned beyond redemption?
I know it is not so....I do not rebel.
And you, my mother, called me loose
When I breathed three immortal words
I love you
And I am no longer chaste when warm fingers encircle my own.

Liliana Lopez Jul 2017

Eden

When fantasies deviate so far
From the truth
The lies you tell yourself
So vivid that they become
A separate reality,
You have already fallen
Down into the precipice
And eaten of the Forbidden Fruit.
Only to awake after The Fall.

Liliana Lopez Jun 2017

To My Father

If you had lived, would the sun rise any different?
Or would the stars gleam any more, any less?
If you had lived, would the winds cease to blow, to cry?
No.
But if you had lived, I would rise, I'd be your blinding star,
A whirlwind to upheave and change the world!
If you had lived.
Not a dead promise of a daughter
A sliver of what you were.
Papá, si aún vivías, ¿estuvieras orgulloso de mi?

Liliana Lopez Jun 2017

The Lost Generation

Our time has passed away.
The flower has wilted,
No longer fluid, fresh.
Flowers left by lovers
Who are long cold, dead.
The red of spilt blood
Has bleached love white, white roses
Pain subsidizes not in action,
But in the thought
Of a thousand sounds pounding
In the cold damp.
It reeks of carnage.
War, you have left a void:
A blank in hearts.
How to wander aimlessly
Being neither here nor there?

#loss #wwi