Author: poetryfest

You knew exactly
what it would do to me. You,
who knew me best. It was like the death
of three of my people, two of them
grandchildren, one of them
you,
my daughter.

I have to go about
like an amputee:
a quarter of a heart,
rubber legs,
arms sawed off
limping about avoiding
the toy section,
Christmas,
the pail and shovel,
“Baby Shark,”
grilled cheese,
and the whole world.
You all are so woven
into the tapestry of my life, I spend
my hours trying not to remember
the touch of his tiny hand,
his head in my lap,
your soft hair, gilded waterfall.

Sometimes I think
I hear them, stumbling
up the stairs, spilling
into my room, they poke
their heads in and
then, amazingly,
there you are just behind them!

I dream of all of you.
I call your name but can make no sound.

I can make no sound.

my grandma is dying
I guess
we don’t act like she’s dying
but she is

not right now
not for a few years
but the doctors put a name on it
tell us it’s coming

I don’t know this kind of dying
the kind where they forecast it, only
couple-days-ago-dying, only
late-to-find-the-body-dying

so I’m a bad granddaughter
I forget the name
I don’t read many articles
because it hasn’t happened
yet, and I don’t know
how to know
alive-dying

In spring’s embrace, the earth reclaims her voice,
A verdant song where life begins anew,
The buds unfurl, the rivers dance and rejoice,
As light and warmth weave through the morning dew.

But Shelley’s world, where beauty met despair,
Now speaks in tongues of fire and melting ice,
The blossoms’ blush, a fragile, fleeting prayer,
As earth’s own pulse is taxed by heavy price.

Summer strides bold, with golden, burning hand,
Her breath a heat that sears the weary ground,
Yet nature’s cycle spins, as once it planned,
Though now, its rhythm altered, sights confound.

We stand within this altered cadence, torn,
Our echoes lost within the thunder’s cry,
What once was life in birth, now scars adorn,
The seasons shift beneath a darkened sky.

Look at it she says with a firm but gentle voice, you will feel better if you look at it.

I knew in my heart and in that moment, whatever blood and tissue or perfect baby girl lay on that cold steel table would get no acknowledgement from me.

I desperately pressed my face away, against that same cold steel, I could feel the tears pooling on my cheeks and my legs straining against the stirrups.

The joy we felt just weeks earlier, when the plate on my full belly danced as she explored her secret world.

Anastasia, curly red hair, big blue eyes and a future of endless possibilities.

Syphilis the Doctor gently murmured as he stroked my hand when the quickening stopped.

After that, I found myself at the hospital on the Gulf where all the poor girls go.

I should have hated the man I married.

I should have left.

I should have listened to my family and his and never married him to begin with.

However, his training was ironclad before I was on the shores of the Gulf.

Cut off from anyone who had ever loved me.

3 AM wake up calls when the clerk was too friendly or I smiled at a random stranger.

Always known for my strength my moxy and my humor before I met him.

It took three years for his family to call my parents and explain that I would not survive.

I bundled up my new son and went home.

40 years later secure and happy with the man I love.

I console my friend as she gives me the details of her daughter’s miscarriage.

With tears in her eyes she ask, “How do you get over something like that”

With no confidence in my voice, I say, “You just do”.

I was, maybe, three
years old, when my mother
said: “I challenge you to run
from here to the corner.”

And, delighted, I ran.

On my spring stick new legs,
I ran,
giving it my all,
I ran,
alongside the old stone building,

While holding my mother’s hand
and I felt the wind
in my hair,
and that delicious,
palatable,
infinite
sense of freedom
for the first time.

It was 1974
and the country was on the verge
of shaking the shackles
of a fifty year-old dictatorship.
shots resonated against the darkness
and the first morning lights
unveiled the corpses of
insurrectors,
lying,
their eyes wide
with surprise,
by the roadside.

But that day,
I ran.

so, my love, destroyer of all and everything,
when did you first realize you were broken?
and why did you gather the shards,
all those jagged pieces,
only to carve and mangle
the ones you swore to never harm?

you are the truest image
of the duality of man.

You took half of our memories, our stories.
You left, and the void grew… and grew, and grew.
I miss being someone, a friend, to you.
I miss the inside jokes, the love I knew.

And I miss you. I will always miss you.
Because the person I met in first grade
No longer exists. Time caused her to fade.
Now, I am no more than a blurry shade,
But m’love remained as from the other we strayed.

Distance, miscommunication—a blade—
Sharp, inevitable, and misunderstood.
Did we not do everything we could?
I mourn our friendship, our faulty childhood.

Echoes of your resentment may or should
haunt my days, but I will let them. I’ll sink
and soak. I’ll let it drown me as I think
about the torn up pages and smudged ink
that rusts our decaying chain’s early link.

Let me feel it all at once—purge the thought
Let the wound finally sting, bleed, and clot
Let my selfish conscience unload—the knot
in my throat untangle. The bond I sought

‘S-no more. Ne’er was. May’t rest, as it once fought.

[intertwined with Anne Carson’s “If Not, Winter”

never have your words belonged to you.
the etched papyrus
[covers
those who hold your heart,
those you lost.

[bitter
they left you –
begging, pleading to stay
[I simply want to be dead
than be without you.
[their hearts grew cold
from sterile time spent in sterile marriages,

and you. you were frozen.
immortalized.
[grieving for the past
while she moved forward.

I find myself yearning,
[cloth dripping
with blood from torn, delicate hands
that hold your ruined remembrance
together.
[whatever you
keep hidden from me, I tell myself,
is to keep me safe.

I am
[aware of this:
I cannot stop myself.
[you burn me.
forever, it will be
[you, I want
You.
[I shall love
you, my darling.
[as long as there is in me
a heart that beats. even after its
final note,
[I shall love
you then.
to love is
[to suffer
you once told me, and
[in myself I am
unable to disbelieve a word that falls
from your lips,
soft petals from dying violets.

[rejoice, go and
[remember me.

I will. I do. I lay next to her;
you are
[right here
with me.
I kiss her once, hear your voice
[ (now again)
I kiss her twice, hear your voice
[some sweet song,
dripping,
[honeyvoiced

–Submit to Aphrodite,
[to love’s desire.
She loves you with something
[new
that others will remember

[even in another time.
I cry out to You in the night, and
[into desire I shall come
but, my Beloved, it is
[not easy for us.
there is
[no grove
for our love to flourish,
[no dance
our weary muscles remember,
[no sound
as the weight of Their hands remain
[around your soft throat.
They want you to
[sing to us
through Their mouths
and leave you
[trembling.

never again will you be wholly yours.

[I am broken with longing
for a soul drowning,
chest Agape –
[golder than gold
you glisten in the ink, and I
sink in
to float alongside you for
[as long as you want.

What if we chose to live each day
As if it were our last
With no worries of tomorrow
And no burdens of the past

How would we spend that last day here
With loved ones or with friends?
Or would we just go crazy
Tying up loose ends

I don’t think one day is enough
To do all I want to do
But yet we waste the days we have
Just trying to get through

I think instead that we should try
To treat days from above
As gifts of time here on this earth
To share with those we love

So whether it be seconds
Minutes, hours, or days
Spend every one with care
Just as money parts it’s ways

Don’t throw away this gift of time
To things that we don’t treasure
So in the end you won’t look back
And worry for the measure

So as the days turn Into weeks
Then months and even years
We will share the benefits
Of time used with no fears

Arizona sunset- – –
Beautiful and fleeting
Its golden and orange hues
So mesmerizing and captivating
but never as breathtaking as the next.

Childhood- – –
Short and serene
When I lived my days worry-free
wishing we could go back
To times of ease
When I would eat saltines
And have worry free sleep

Life- – –
Fleeting moments
Like sand in the wind
Feel like yesterday
Now fleeting memories
That we look back on
Like any other day

Nature- – –
Birds chirping
The creek glistening
So quiet yet so loud
A peaceful chaos
Full of beauty

Philmont- – –
I walk so much
Till I can no longer walk
Till I can no longer talk
Legs aching
An endless journey
For I am just waiting till it’s over