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Will it last? he says.
Is it a masterpiece?
Will generation after generation
Turn with reverence to the page?

Birdseye scholar of the frozen fish,
What would he make of the sole, clean, clear
Leap of the salmon that has disappeared?

To be, yes!—whether they like it or not!
But not to last when leap and water are forgotten,
A plank of standard pinkness in the dish.

They also live
Who swerve and vanish in the river.
Fable IV, Livre IV.

À mes enfants.


Du printemps la fille vermeille,
La rose ne vit qu'un moment,
Dont le papillon et l'abeille
Profitent bien différemment.
Gaspillant, comme un fou, les biens qu'on lui prodigue
Tandis que l'insecte léger,
Chenille un jour avant, funeste au potager,
En stériles baisers sur la fleur se fatigue,
L'abeille y puise l'or qu'attendent ses rayons,
L'or qui doit la nourrir dans sa maison bien close,
Longtemps après le jour fatal aux papillons,
Où l'on voit se faner la rose.

Au travail, mes enfants, accordez une part
Dans les jours de votre jeunesse :
Tout donner au plaisir n'est pas de la sagesse ;
Tel qui pense autrement, même avant la vieillesse,
S'en repentira, mais trop ****.
Vano el motivo
desta prosa:
nada...
Cosas de todo día.
Sucesos
banales.
Gente necia,
local y chata y roma.
Gran tráfico
en el marco de la plaza.
Chismes.
Catolicismo.
Y una total inopia en los cerebros...
Cual
si todo
se fincara en la riqueza,
en menjurjes bursátiles
y en un mayor volumen de la panza.
In my travels I spent time with a great yogi.
Once he said to me.

“Become so still you hear the blood flowing
through your veins.”

One night as I sat in quiet,
I seemed on the verge of entering a world inside so vast
I know it is the source of
all of
us.
Coming together
it is easier to work
after our bodies
meet
paper and pen
neither care nor profit
whether we write or not
but as your body moves
under my hands
charged and waiting
we cut the leash
you create me against your thighs
hilly with images
moving through our word countries
my body
writes into your flesh
the poem
you make of me.

Touching you I catch midnight
as moon fires set in my throat
I love you flesh into blossom
I made you
and take you made
into me.
—and not simply by the fact that this shading of
forest cannot show the fragrance of balsam,
the gloom of cypresses,
is what I wish to prove.

When you and I were first in love we drove
to the borders of Connacht
and entered a wood there.

Look down you said: this was once a famine road.

I looked down at ivy and the scutch grass
rough-cast stone had
disappeared into as you told me
in the second winter of their ordeal, in

1847, when the crop had failed twice,
Relief Committees gave
the starving Irish such roads to build.

Where they died, there the road ended

and ends still and when I take down
the map of this island, it is never so
I can say here is
the masterful, the apt rendering of
the spherical as flat, nor
an ingenious design which persuades a curve
into a plane,
but to tell myself again that

the line which says woodland and cries hunger
and gives out among sweet pine and cypress,
and finds no horizon

will not be there.
In the worst hour of the worst season
    of the worst year of a whole people
a man set out from the workhouse with his wife.
He was walking-they were both walking-north.

She was sick with famine fever and could not keep up.
    He lifted her and put her on his back.
He walked like that west and north.
Until at nightfall under freezing stars they arrived.

In the morning they were both found dead.
    Of cold. Of hunger. Of the toxins of a whole history.
But her feet were held against his breastbone.
The last heat of his flesh was his last gift to her.

Let no love poem ever come to this threshold.
    There is no place here for the inexact
praise of the easy graces and sensuality of the body.
There is only time for this merciless inventory:

Their death together in the winter of 1847.
    Also what they suffered. How they lived.
And what there is between a man and a woman.
And in which darkness it can best be proved.
Escribo, borro,
escribo, borro.
Como si la vida fuese un libro,
un clásico;
como si el lápiz
no se gastase,
dejando solo la goma.
Como si fuéramos imborrables,
como si no se nos pudiera
romper el grafo
en cualquier momento.
Escribo, borro,
escribo,
borro...
an eternal flame
flickerings of hope and peace
all within the fire
**** culture is when I was six, and
my brother punched my two front teeth out.
Instead of reprimanding him, my mother
said “What did you do to provoke him?”
When my only defense was my
mother whispering in my ear, “Honey, ignore him.
Don’t rile him up. He just wants a reaction.”

As if it was my sole purpose, the reason
six-year-old me existed,
was to not rile up my brother.
It’s starts when we’re six, and ends
when we grow up assuming the natural state of a man
is a predator, and I must walk on eggshells, as to
not “rile him up.” Right, mom?
**** culture is when through casual dinner conversation,
my father says that women who get ***** are asking for it.
He says, “I see them on the streets of New York City,
with their short skirts and heavy makeup. Asking for it.”

When I used to be my father’s hero but
will he think I was asking for it?
Will he think I deserved it?
Will he hold me accountable or will he hold me,
even though the touch of a man - especially my father’s -
burns as if I were holding the sun in the palm of my hand.
**** culture is you were so ashamed, you thought it would
be easier for your parents to find you dead,
than to say, “Hey mom and dad,”
It was not my fault. I did not ask for it.
I never asked for this attention, I never asked
to be a target, to be weak because I was born with
two X chromosomes, to walk in fear, to always look behind me,
in front of me, next to me, I never asked to be the prey.
I never wanted to spend my life being something
someone feasts upon, a meal for the eternally starved.
I do not want to hear about the way I taste anymore.
I will not let you eat me alive.
**** culture is I should not defend my friend when
an overaggressive frat boy has his hand on her ***,
because standing up for her body “makes me a target.”
Women are afraid to speak up, because
they fear their own lives - but I’d rather take the hit
than live in a culture of silence.
I am told that I will always be the victim, pre-determined
by the DNA in my weaker, softer body.
I have birthing hips, not a fighter’s stance.
I am genetically pre-dispositioned to lose every time.
**** culture is he was probably abused as a child.
When he even has some form of a justification
and all I have are the things that provoked him,
and the scars from his touch are woven of the darkest
and toughest strings, underneath the layer of my skin.
**** culture leaves me finding pieces of him left inside of me.
A bone of his elbow. The cap of his knee.
There is something so daunting in the way that I know it will take
me years to methodically extract him from my body.
And that twinge I will get sometimes in my arm years later?
Proof of the past.
Like a tattoo I did not ask for.
Somehow I am permanently inked.
**** culture is you can’t wear that outfit anymore
without feeling *****, without feeling like
you somehow earned it.
You will feel like you are walking on knives,
every time you wear the shoes
you smashed his nose in with.
Imaginary blood on the bottom of your heels,
thinking, maybe this will heal me.
Those shoes are your freedom,
But the remains of a life long fight.
You will always carry your heart,
your passion, your absolute will to live,
but also the shame and the guilt and the pain.
I saved myself but I still feel like I’m walking on knives.
**** culture is “You were not really *****, you were
one of the lucky ones.”

Because my body was not penetrated by a *****,
but fingers instead, that I should feel lucky.
I should get on my hands and knees and say, thank you.
Thank you for being so kind.
**** culture is “things could have been worse.”
“It’s been a month. Get out of bed.”
“You’ll have to get over this eventually.”
“Don’t let it ruin your life.”
**** culture is he told you that after he touched you,
no one would ever want you again.
And you believed him.
**** culture is telling your daughters not to get *****,
instead of teaching your sons how to treat all women.
That *** is not a right. You are not entitled to this.
The worst possible thing you can call a woman is a
****, a *****, a *****.
The worst possible thing you can call a man is a
*****, a *****, a girl.
The worst thing you can call a girl is a girl.
The worst thing you can call a guy is a girl.
Being a woman is the ultimate rejection,
the ultimate dismissal of strength and power, the
absolute insult.

When I have a daughter,
I will tell her that she is not
an insult.
When I have a daughter, she will know how to fight.
I will look at her like the sun when she comes home
with anger in her fists.
Because we are human beings and we do not
always have to take what we are given.
They all tell her not to fight fire with fire,
but that is only because they are afraid of her flames.
I will teach her the value of the word “no” so that
when she hears it, she will not question it.
Don’t you dare apologize for the fierce love
you have for yourself
and the lengths you go to preserve it.
I am alive because of the fierce love I have
for myself, and because my father taught me
to protect that.
He taught me that sometimes, I have to do
my own bit of saving, pick myself off the
ground and wipe the dirt off my face,
because at the end of the day,
there is only me.
I am alive because my mother taught me
to love myself.
She taught me that I am an enigma - a
mystery, a paradox, an unfinished masterpiece and
I must love myself enough to see how I turn out.
I am alive because even beaten, voiceless, and back
against the wall, I knew there was an ounce of me
worth fighting for.
And for that, I thank my parents.
Instead of teaching my daughter to cover herself up,
I will show her how to be exposed.
Because no is not “convince me”.
No is not “I want it”.
You call me,
“Little lady, pretty girl, beautiful woman.”
But I am not any of these things for you.
**I am exploding light,
my daughter will be exploding light,
and you,
better cover your eyes.
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