Poetry and Prose by Gabriela Marie Milton #1 Amazon Bestselling Poet & Editor, Award Winning Author, Pushcart Prize Nominee
Author: Gabriela Marie Milton
Gabriela Marie Milton #1 Amazon Best-Selling Author, 2019 Author of the Year at Spillwords Press NYC; internationally published poet; poetry collections Woman: Splendor and Sorrow (Vita Brevis Pres, July 27, 2021); Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings (Vita Brevis Press, April, 2020)
ah, I forgot to tell you when I meet you in my dreams Arabella still sells bracelets in the silver market she asks me every time about you while lizards run their greens into the nearby parkette I lie and promise her you’ll come next time to buy another bracelet and some juicy limes
now in the silence of long purple nights the silver bracelets do not hurt my flesh at all but every minute you are not with me cuts yet another wound into my soul
I am developing a new project that will further promote the writings of our literary community. It’s an extremely demanding and complex project, and I am very excited about. New updates in a month or so.
Furthermore I am preparing a new book; an English-Spanish bilingual edition of my poems. The poem below, The Miracle of You, is included. I hope you enjoy the English, as well as, the Spanish version.
The Miracle of You
the moon’s right-hand pours soul into my flesh pigeons’ wings bring scents of lilac blooms the air gets drunk with poetry statuary women of the water flaunt their hair
within the loneliness of you my heart rotates five equinoxes on a wooden spindle your eyes pour flesh into my soul my body germinates the sounds of growing leaves I wash my hands into the waters of Guadalquivir in the scented night of those who never sleep I say I love you and in one single breath our wedding is transformed in an enraptured death
Fuiste tú el milagro
La mano derecha de la luna vierte alma dentro de mi carne, los aleteos de las palomas traen aromas de lilas en flor, el aire se emborracha de poesía, imaginarias mujeres del agua, sirenas, alardean de cabello.
Dentro de tu soledad mi corazón gira cinco equinoccios cual uso de madera, tus ojos vierten carne dentro de mi alma, mi cuerpo germina los sonidos de hojas que brotan, lavo mis manos en las aguas del Guadalquivir en la perfumada noche de aquellos que nunca duermen. Digo “te quiero” y en solo un respiro nuestra boda se convierte en un morir de éxtasis ¿Fue la luna? ¿Fue el aroma de mayo? Quizás fuiste tú el milagro.
Good luck to everyone who starts school or whose children are starting school. The summer is about to end in the Northern hemisphere.
[From my poetry collection Woman: Splendor and Sorrow :I Love Poems and Poetic Prose.]
Between the bed and the window, in that space that smells roses and rien que pour toi, the morning lets her hair down. She is so close that I can reach her skin with the tip of my fingers.
I know … his book and the fame it brought him. The book in which he made me – the me that he imagined – the main character.
He was fascinated by the purple of my makeup and the yellows of my cobra, who used to erect the upper portion of her body to greet him every time he visited.
I do not know what demons he tried to exorcise. In the heat of those summer afternoons, he used to sip his sangria and attempt to find almost religious justifications for what he called my ecstatic existence; an existence populated with the richness and succulence of the Mediterranean literature and void of bullet points.
His acute shyness and his need to overcome the incapacity to love beyond nightly adventures used to ring in my ears like some unhinged marimba lamenting the loss of a pipe.
The dress that I wear in page twenty-seven. That dress and the heart-shaped red stone pierced with a hole for the suspension I used to wrap around my neck. I found that stone in a churchyard.
I was too young. Perhaps an older version of me would have made him a better writer. Do not laugh. You are too handsome when you laugh.
In the end, he managed to do something special. He invented the name of a perfume and made me wear it on every page of his book: rien que pour toi. I hid his book somewhere in the library. Yet, every morning, in the space between the bed and the window, it still smells rien que pour toi.
On August 2021 Woman: Splendor and Sorrow :I Love Poems and Poetic Prose became a #1 Amazon bestseller. My deepest thanks to everyone who bought my book.
Nature Speaks of Love and Sorrow, by Jeff Flesch, is a superb collection whose pages are saturated with poetic intelligence. The author builds a magnificent correspondence between the natural realm and the spiritual one, without making use of language techniques most symbolists employ(ed), preferring the un-revealed/the unknown to the revealed/the known. In Jeff’s poetry nature does not need any intermediary to speak to the soul and vice versa.
Nature has always provided a feast for senses. In this collection nature provides more than the aromas of daisies and lavender, or the silhouette of the willow tree projected against the sky. It provides a journey of self-discovery which ultimately leads to a better understanding of the self.
The message is clear. The more you understand nature, the more you understand yourself.
I dance to the tune of the moon/learning more about nature/and the aspects/of self/hidden under the trees in bloom/
The identification of the movement of natural elements with love is one remarkable element of Jeff’s poetry.
while I sit and I listen/to the clouds bursting wide open:/a deluge, like the love I feel for you/
Sometimes nature plays a restorative role and other times it becomes part of the author’s sorrows: pebbles always underfoot, while salt/ stings my eyes/always being told boys don’t cry/ pain is deep… or/and part of his love: finding the center/of a love both soft and cherished//as apples bow trees/ know that you always have been true to me:/
In the last piece included in this collection we find one of Jeff’s beliefs which serves not only as a closing argument but also as a direct way a expressing the idea that time heals everything.
At the end, we set sail on the winds of time/and let go the pain we’d held inside.
I find it interesting that despite the restorative capacity of nature, and its intimate link with the human soul, the ultimate healing does not come from nature. It comes from time. A change of perspective that adds new depths to Jeff’s book.
Nature Speaks of Love and Sorrow is an astonishing collection. Jeff’s poetry not only delights the soul. Equally it delights the intellect. It is a must have. No one will regret reading it.
For five times in twenty-four hours, I face in the direction of the sea.
The first time the morning star floats above the water as innocent as the breast of a young girl. Soon the sun will try to catch her naked and burn her skin. She will escape. Pigeons will carry her across the sea. She will melt into yellow waters. Her last rays will fall in my lap like feathers.
I will rejoice.
The second time, divorced from her night bed, the light disperses itself on the shore. I can see myself washing clothes in the sea. My hair is tied in a ponytail. I am barefoot, and my dress is rolled up. The skin of my lips is cracked. I bleed. The clothes I wash smell cedar and spices. The shadow of a seagull positions itself on my forehead. The sea reflects the twelve signs of the zodiac. I can see no relationship between my destiny and that which I do. I am scared.
At noon, the sun kneads the waters with rapture. Shells shed pearls on the shore. My own rational thought leaves my body. I delight in the waves like a gazelle in the grasslands. I feel the movement of the water on my skin. Its cyclical quality sends me in a state of ecstasy. No, it is not the ecstasy of Saint Teresa of Ávila. It is something similar to a soporific trance. I am dead, and I am alive at the same time. I come from the sea. I return to the sea.
In the afternoon, my rational self awakes. My mind spreads its wings. I get preoccupied with verbs. I set one triangle in the normal position, and I invert the other one. I bind them together. I make myself a dress from pieces of paper inscribed with old symbols. Oh, femininity! You are the goddess of vines, the mother earth, the chalice, the blood, the fertility of the womb. I mull over these desperate efforts to equalize the feminine with the masculine. There is nothing in these symbols that points to the intellect of a woman.
In the evening, the sky stretches itself from blue to dark violet. The silk of the gloves hugs my fingers. I feed my iguana with cookies soaked in champagne. She hisses at me. I open a package of silk stockings. The door opens by itself. You step in. I stare at you. You are in by your own volition. One kiss and you borrow my tears. One touch, and I borrow your pain. A passage rite. I keep a coffin adorned with lilies in my bedroom. I sleep besides death like Sarah Bernhardt.
Did you hear that noise? A rosary fell from the Spanish chest.
The wind slips between the petals of a rose and opens it.
Who am I? If I knew, I would tell you.
Did you say you love me? The twenty-four hours are up. Nobody is facing in the direction of the sea anymore.
I cannot tell which of the wounds I acquired hurts the most. I gather all of them in a large wicker basket. Every summer morning I sort them out. I re-live each of them.
I see how the Lie walks hand in hand with the Betrayal, and how the Betrayal indulges herself in the sweetest of wine. Oh, that irresistible taste of black grapes that melts in her mouth. It almost makes her attractive.
The Envy wears red lipstick and high heels. She dances naked on a wooden table. At every turn, she spreads poisonous confetti in the air, and lowers her eyes. I try to decipher the meaning of her gestures. I cannot.
The Greed, with her childbearing hips, indulges herself with poor souls who live at the margins of the city. The children are hungry, and the mother long exhausted. The beds are cold. The moonlight enters the room through broken windows.
I feel the pulse in my temples. Exhausted I go over the meaning of love and sacrifice. I try to restore them to the right place.
Love is the consummation of all acts leading to the warm meal one hands to an old man during winters. It is the sum of all unknowns. It is the finger that draws stars in the darkest of skies.
Sacrifice? You tell me.
Sightly revised version of the original published in Women: Splendor and Sorrow :I Love Poems and Poetic Prose
“I am ecstatic that the book was for 9 days a #1 Amazon Bestseller [category: poetry anthologies].”
“The book is a memorable collection of over 200 poems by more than 100 authors. It’s a must-have because we all can benefit from the poetry of survival, and of healing. We all can benefit from the experiences so strongly evoked in this book. We all can come together to emerge triumphant from pain. We all need to understand that equity among sexes will lead to the creation of social, economic, and political structures far more suited to respond to the challenges of the future.”
You can read the entire interview in the link below.
As of this writing Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Womenis still running #1 on Amazon New Releases [poetry anthologies]. I cannot tell you how humbled and delighted I am. The poetry in this volume is fabulous. Your voices deserve to be heard.
I will be interviewed by New York Glamour Magazine about our book. I will post the link when the interview is published.
Below is my one of my readings from Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women: Beginnings, by Jo Lynn Juneau. I hope you enjoy it. I hope it inspires you to start reading your own poems.
video by Gabriela Marie Milton
Beginnings by Jo Lynn Juneau
Cast out of Paradise, Eden’s perpetual exiles the surreptitious serpent, now lies crushed under our feet God took a lesser part of Man, and created from it the strength of humanity we bear the world in our wombs, and bear its weight on our shoulders we suffer the pain of giving life, so we suffer death differently we are harbingers of antiquity and the future we are Goddess we are Mother we are One
UPDATE:
Since June 17 Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women has been a #1 Amazon bestseller. As I write this update it still is. Thank you to everyone who helped us. We would not be #1 without you.
Check our publisher Experiments in Fiction‘s post here to see a picture of our book in a bookstore in UK. It is exciting. The book is fantastic. It deserves to be read. It deserves to be in bookstores.
Have a lovely day and thank you for spreading the word about our anthology.
Yesterday, June 17 2022, Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women became a #1 Amazon bestseller! As your editor and curator and am deeply honored and excited. So are your publisher, Ingrid Wilson, and I suspect all authors who know about.
Does it say #1 and #2 in New Releases in Poetry Anthologies? That is because both editions of Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women the kindle edition, and the paperback were #1. However, you cannot have #1 twice in Hot New Releases, so we ended up #1 and #2. Taken separately you could see both editions were running #1.
I cannot tell you how much that means to me. It humbles me and it fills my heart with joy.
Yesterday evening we were #1 in Women’s Poetry category too.
Let’s keep this book a #1 bestseller for a while. Women’s lives are important. Let’s show everyone we believe that. Let’s walk the walk.
Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women is out!
To the readers: A stunning poetry anthology. From its gorgeous pages, pain driven away by healing. Souls who endured, fought, and won. Some of them still waiting to win. Empowerment. We all need it. The life of women. We all need to read it.
To the authors: It was an honor and a pleasure to edit and curate this anthology. Your poetry showed me the way to your souls. For that I will be forever grateful. In my darkest moments, I will think about how each and one of you fought. Your fight became my candle to a better tomorrow. I’ll take my broken heart and mend it because you showed me how.
To the entire team who worked on this anthology: Ingrid Wilson of Experiments in Fiction, thank you for working on this book and for publishing it. Nick Reeves, gratitude for the gorgeous cover art, and editing expertise. It was an honor and a pleasure to work with both of you.
Yesterday, Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women was running #4 in Amazon Hot New Releases [category: anthology].
Please spread the word. Help us to get these talented and brave authors to #1. They deserve it. You will not regret reading their words.
Amazon description:
Award-winning authors, Pushcart nominees, emerging poets, voices of women and men, come to the fore in this stunning, powerful, and unique anthology. These poems testify both to the challenges that women face in our society, and to their power to overcome them. A memorable collection of over 200 poems by more than 100 authors, this anthology is a must-have for anyone. We all can benefit from the poetry of survival, and of healing. We all can benefit from the experiences so beautifully evoked in this book. We can all come together to emerge triumphant from pain.
Do not forget the launching party is June 18, 3pm London time and it will be live-steamed on YouTube.
