Imprint - 09/14/26
How can I explain with any dignity
the fact of a person loved yet half-met?
My journal talks about you like the marks
left by my bleeding pen on papers
beneath, staining their use.
You imprinted on my soul without
ever needing to show your face;
now our words are enmeshed,
you forever writing, and myself
forced to act as canvas.
History - 09/15/26
entwined in my cells
tragedies of ages past
of violations and
child marriages
this i remember
while walking
next to blueprints
of decayed houses
how much of me
has been lost?
and how much
will be?
Remembrances - 09/15/26
I asked my mother to teach me about
el duende, alma del poeta, que
fue dedicada a Andalucía
por Lorca, genio baleado en
la primavera de su vida. But
she missed my meaning. In one breath, she spun
a tale from sixty years ago as if
it happened yesterday. My Ita used
to scare her children into behaving
with yarns of “duendes”, little cannibals.
Chilibre was all brush and cave before
Americans built their dam, Ita said,
the dam that sank tall Alajuela spires
beneath the depths of new Gatun Lake. Then
it was that duendes feasted upon grown men.