On Winning and Hate By Gabriela Marie Milton #poetic prose #short prose

On Winning and Hate

The afternoon smelled of brick; the wall I used to scratch with the knees and the nails on my way to the sea.

My blood stained my socks and fed the roots of the orange tree mama planted one spring before my seventh birthday. Soon after, the tree grew blood oranges.

I used to dream I would reach the port before crickets would serenade the white cement between the bricks, and the evening wind would sew the wounds from the face of the wall.

I needed a God to lead me to the sea. In Mama’s stories, there were too many Gods leading souls to heaven. I did not want to go to heaven. I wanted to go to the sea.

I used to fail. I did not understand what failure is. The next afternoon, little ducks embroidered on the rim of my blue dress, I would start climbing the wall again.

One day I thought I would get to the port and run straight into the sea.

Little did I know that day came when I first looked into your eyes. The sea inside your eyes like laundry left to dry on a wire. Long red poles floundered left and right like the wings of a moribund bird. The body of a boat eroded by salt, and by the kisses of the women of your past agonized in green and blue.

The sea inside your eyes: on the right your love for me, and on the left, your hate for the world.

Did I say your love for me? You see, over time, I had to reconsider that formulation. Your feelings resembled more a never-ending animal magnetism than love.

Let me make one thing clear. No one person is sufficient to drive all demons from another one. You can think Goethe’s elective affinities if you wish. I cannot save you from you. You need to help me. I can carry this conversation into the night and win.

Ah, winning! The day I understood I can win, I stepped into hell.

That day was the day I lost my innocence and with that the paradise. Since then, my blood has never stained my socks anymore. The orange tree has never grown red-fleshed oranges, and Mama stopped telling stories.

featured image: Gabriela Marie Milton, Greece.

Included in my book Woman: Splendor and Sorrow

Gabriela Marie Milton
2022 Pushcart Prize Nominee
Publisher, Editor, Award Winning & #1 Amazon Bestselling Author
Books:

Hidden in Childhood: A Poetry Anthology (ed.), Literary Revelations, 2023
Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women (ed.), Experiments in Fiction, 2022.
Woman: Splendor and Sorrow :I Love Poems and Poetic Prose, Vita Brevis Press, 2021.
Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, Vita Brevis Press, 2020

I am deeply grateful to the Italian poet Flavio Almerighi – a poet whose work I admire – for translating my poem French Symbolism into Italian and for the feature in Gioielli Rubati 257.

French Symbolism in English

It’s still July mon amour
hot sands and old lovers torment my dreams
the waters are frantic
the flowers are dying
smell of fresh tombs and heavy perfumes.

Whispering tongues of burned summers
wrap around a verse from Rimbaud
A Season in Hell and another in heaven
tell me my bones and my blood
breathe only for you.

A Chinoise cup falls on the floor
the cats too lazy to move or to purr
my bras are too tight
the kisses too cool
your decadence
runs my past tense in gerund.

Translated in Italian by Flavio Almerighi

Simbolismo francese

È ancora luglio mon amour
sabbie calde e vecchi amanti tormentano i miei sogni
le acque sono frenetiche
i fiori stanno morendo
odorano di tombe fresche e profumi pesanti.

Lingue sussurrate di estati bruciate
avvolgono un verso di Rimbaud
Una stagione all’inferno e un’altra in paradiso
dimmi che le mie ossa e il mio sangue
respirano solo per te….

…

Read further HERE. Gioielli Rubati 257 features several other wonderful poets.

A quick reminder: Literary Revelations will release Building Sandcastles: A Book of Short Poems by C.X. Turner and James Welsh in late July/early August. Please stay tuned for more updates.

Thank you everyone.

Featured art: Pierre-Auguste Renoir – Sleeping Cat, Public Domain

Gabriela Marie Milton
2022 Pushcart Prize Nominee
Publisher, Editor, Award Winning & #1 Amazon Bestselling Author
Books:

Coming soon: Literary Revelations Publishing House

Dear Readers,

It is with utmost pleasure I announce that the Literary Revelations Publishing House will open soon. It will be up and running in early November of this year.

Literary Revelations honors the memory of my mother whose passion for literature knew no limits.

I owe a great debt of gratitude to both my parents. However, it was my mother’s love for languages, literature, and arts that permeated every fiber of my being starting very early in my childhood. That love has never left me.

I am happy to tell you that Literary Revelations has already manuscripts under consideration, and it will open with a call for an anthology. Literary Revelations will feature a poetry journal and provide services for authors such as marketing, reviews, and Spanish translations staring January 2023.

Please watch this space for more updates and the launching of the press’ website. Follow me on Twitter @shortprose1.

Have a glorious weekend everyone and let me know if you have any questions.

Below please find a paragraph describing Literary Revelations’ mission.

Literary Revelations Mission Statement [excerpt]

Our mission is to feature emerging and established authors of poetry and fiction.

We publish most poetry genres: epic, lyric, narrative, or prose poetry. We expect work that dazzles the intellect, and delights the soul; work that makes feelings blossom into symphonies of love, beauty, and sorrow. Interpret the silence. Find the place where love was born, and tears are entombed. Be the voice of prophets. Be the soft whisper of Sakura.

Dream, create, suggest. Avoid cliches. Avoid the banal and the explicit, even if both have become trendy. Remember “To define is to kill. To suggest is to create.” (Stéphane Mallarmé).

We also publish fiction such as mystery, romance, fantasy, and other types. We do not publish erotica.

Remember a novel is not the mere act of outlining one thing after another. We do not look for tables of contents. We want you to love, and to suffer, with your characters. To remember the importance of the landscape, and to look over your shoulder where the unknown lies. Embrace it. Remember what Jorge Luis Borges said: “When writers die they become books, which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation.”

Make sure you get everything right.

Gabriela Marie Milton
Pushcart Prize Nominee
#1 Amazon Bestselling Author
Books:
Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women (ed.), Experiments in Fiction, 2022.
Woman: Splendor and Sorrow :I Love Poems and Poetic Prose, Vita Brevis Press, 2021.
Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, Vita Brevis Press, 2020

Image: Gabriela Marie Milton, 2022, Interior of Capela dos Ossos, Évora

Autumn. The day after Helen left for Madeira. The city’s noises vanish in a moribund sun. A paraffin lamp burns on a glass table. The light trickles on the walls like water. There is something familiar about this room. Vague scents of dried flowers. Tear-like motifs on the walls.

I hear footsteps.
I shudder.

– Miguel, let’s get out of here.

He put his hand over my month.

Laughter comes from upstairs. It’s Jacques’ laughter. His and the laughter of a woman. She is not Helen. It can’t be her. Helen left yesterday. What am I thinking? The laughter can’t be Jacques’ either. He is dead. Jacques is dead.

The smell of the dried flowers Helen put on his coffin on the day of his funeral invades my nostrils.

I pull away from Miguel’s arms, my soul dark, the tightness in my throat stronger. In a mirror I replace my image with that of my mother. My voice is not mine anymore.

– Miguel, with you or without you, I am getting out of here. Where is the door?

He bites his upper lip.

–Anastasia, I know you are surprised.

I am enraged.

–Surprised? Who? Me? If Winston Churchill would walk in this room right now, wearing Josephine Baker’s famous top hat instead of his, and Bottega Veneta stiletto sandals I would not blink an eye. From now on until the end of my days I swear nothing is going to surprise me anymore.

The light from his eyes vanishes.

– Anastasia, how many times have you asked me for the truth?

I shout.

–Oh, the truth. Stories masquerading reality: the plot, the characters, the setting, the conflict, the theme. Spare me the banalities. I do not need your truth anymore. I want to get out of here. There are dead people in here, or ghosts, or whatever. I want out.

—Anastasia…. Listen…

The geometry of the space changes. Through a little square cut from nothingness, I see a lonely blue jay feather floating in the sky.

Paraffin and dried flowers.

Was Jacques dead?

*draft – modified version of The Blue Jay’s Feather, a piece published in my #1 Amazon Bestselling Book: Woman: Splendor and Sorrow I: Love Poems and Poetic Prose.

Announcements:

I wrote in a previous post that I was going to launch a new project in mid-October. Thank you to all my followers who expressed interest. The launching may come a bit later due to circumstances that are out of my control. Please be patient. Much love to all of you.

I am deeply grateful to everyone who reads and supports my work. Your likes, comments and shares brighten my days. Thank you to those of you who brought to my attention that my posts are getting reproduced on some WP sites on their entirety without my permission and without any links to my original work. To the very few of my followers who do that a gentle reminder for now: unauthorized use and/or duplication of my posts without express and written permission from me is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. Thank you.

Lethargic trees, nights dripping verses in our bed, Baudelaire’s ennui silhouetted against my soul. A young autumn, breasts stuck to the moon, cloudy eyes caught between sunrise and sunset.

There are too many eyes in this place: mine, yours, those of the portraits and the photographs on the walls, why do we have so many portraits and photographs?

Facing the armoire, left arm under your head, you sleep. Black dahlias invade the bedroom. I listen to the sound of nothingness.

I sit in front of the computer. On the screen, Sebastian’s letter.

Anastasia, I have no idea why Jacques fell in love with you. Your mild manners, your lipstick always in the right place, banal essences of Coco Channel on your clothes. Why do you dress in black all the time? Oh, wait, I know, Baudelaire, À une passante,

La rue assourdissante autour de moi hurlait.
Longue, mince, en grand deuil, douleur majestueuse,
Une femme passa, d’une main fastueuse
Soulevant, balançant le feston et l’ourlet

That’s the way you got Jacques. Soft black fabrics, mixtures of innocence and mysteries, the majestic air of an untouchable nun burning with desires.

I try fitting in one of your dresses. Why do you pick taffeta all the time? It’s so yesterday.

I look down. Ravishing view from your balcony. The moon bathes in the water, nightingales sing, the air is soft like the touch of a virgin… Beauty and then forever night… How I long for the forever night… the black of your dresses…

I am not in our bedroom anymore. I hang onto the balustrade of my condo’s balcony. Void. Impulses of self-destruction. I taste their ashes. A mannequin floats in the air. I am scared…

Jacques’ arms wrap around my shoulders.

–Anastasia what are you doing in front of the computer? It’s 3am. Back to bed.

–Sebastian…. Sebastian’s letter on the screen…. Read it.

–What letter, love? There is no letter on the screen. There’s a website that says, “Travel to Corsica.”

*draft

…

2022, Somewhere in Southern Europe, photo Gabriela Marie Milton

September Love – poetic

September again, my steps heavier, my hips moving with the same uncertainty they did during the time when the child was conceived. Barefoot I trampled grapes in a red vat, my dress rolled above the knees, my hair in a bun. The crisp smell of broken Gamay Noir penetrates my nostrils. The first release of the fall juices. Echoes muffled by the cracking of corn roasting on the fire.

I hurt. I miss you desperately. Perhaps you’ve never returned from that September when we first met. Sighing leaves, sobbing skies, cold hands looking to ignite fires. A tango coming from nowhere coiling like a snake around our bodies. Sweet forehead kisses. On my neck, somnolent bruises covered by makeup.

I cannot stand anymore Victorian self-righteousness, fake politeness – “I apologize for interrupting, I came to slit your throat” – people who speak about gratitude without practicing it, questionable advisers who have proliferated like false parasol mushrooms after the rain. They make me sick. The tragicomedy of this world. Poetica, Aristotle. Remember?

Here we go again: young, books under our arms, love burning our eyes until we could see beyond the limits of September, philosophy burning our souls, trademarks of Friday afternoons on our skin. Roman columns reaching the sky at the exact hour when we interlinked our consciousnesses. Pears ripening in trees, branches burying themselves in the earth. Spread at the base of the columns our heated bodies ready to fly. We were not supposed to ever come back.

Why did we, my love?

I steal words from September’s iconostasis. I sew them in a field of dahlias. I wash my hands and my feet. You take the corn from the fire. The child plays. Blue and white awnings murmur in the wind. The child. The sunrise of the first I love you.

Edvard Munch, Weeping Nude, Public Domain

Ghosts by Gabriela Marie Milton

I spend most of my time in the house. I rarely write anymore. I remember what you once said, I believe you were quoting: Culture has become a demonstration of nothingness. It moves with a terrifying speed in direct proportionality with our appetite for fame.

Three times a year fleshy, peachy roses are still being delivered. They have my name on. It happens mid-day, at the exact time when I take sedatives before immersing myself in a bath infused with scented Dead Sea Salt. Dried flowers float in the water. They stain my skin. They make me think summer by our lake: scents of blue irises; somnolent movements of algae.

Nights are cruel. No nightingales. Tree branches hit the master suite’s windows even when the air is soft like the breath of a new baby. Half-naked, lying on the sofa I think Wuthering Heights. Catherine’s ghost knocking on the window. In the dark, Lockwood pushing his hand through the glass. Her cold hand. Her voice. She wants to get in.

Inscriptions: Catherine Heathcliff; Catherine Linton…

I kneel and scratch your name under the frame of every bedroom window. I wait.

The windows start rattling. I pick the middle one. I push my hand through the glass. Pain. The warmth of my blood. The ferocity of wounds. Voices coming from the gooseberry bushes.

You.

Come in my love […]

Gabriela Marie Milton
#1 Amazon Bestselling Author
Books:
Woman: Splendor and Sorrow :I Love Poems and Poetic Prose
Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings

Head of a Woman’ by Jean Jacques Henner, Public Domain

Flash Fiction by Gabriela Marie Milton

My name is Gabriela. Papa used to call me Marie.

One night the moon stretched in our bed, its lips sultry, its breasts soft like two humongous cotton candies bought by the Holyoke Merry-Go-Round Carousel. That night your cascading laughter made all naked desires hide under the bed. I tried to drag them out. I couldn’t.

Later, head on your shoulder I looked at the stars through the broken ceiling, my eyes plagued by an inexorable yearning to prove my existence. I don’t know why. Those who want to prove their existence live in the realm of the inexistent. They are bizarre people who write love letters to themselves trying to deceive others. Any trick is a cry for recognition. Any cry for recognition is a basic assertion of impotence.

What was I doing? Oh, I was trying to get into my red dress. I couldn’t get it over my hips. The humidity of the night must have made it stick to my skin. Did you laugh again? Stop. Put your shirt on. We’re going out.

Anyway, I was talking about the absence of existence itself which always leads to sorcery. The skin of an eel caught in the spring, dried, stuffed with rose petals and rosemary, chopped and hidden behind the head of the bed. A night spent in that bed will haunt the two lovers for life. Like I haunt you.

How did you call me? Why did you use that name? Yes, it is my first name, but nobody uses it. Everyone calls me Gabriela.

Stop calling me Anastasia. I am not resurrected yet. I don’t know who Anastasia is. I’ve never met her. But don’t get fooled. That doesn’t make her less dangerous than me.

Follow me on Twitter here.

Thank you.

Gabriela Marie Milton
#1 Amazon Bestselling Author
Books:
Woman: Splendor and Sorrow :I Love Poems and Poetic Prose
Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings

The Metaphysics of My Writings

I discover myself in my own writings. I dwell in the beliefs stored in my subconscious when I was a child, and in all experiences that followed.

Yet, my work is neither that of a psychologist nor that of an epistemologist. Beyond psychology and epistemology, I try to establish a metaphysics of love. That may make some think of Thomas Aquinas, but that is not what I am talking about. I do not want “to explore the ontological structure of the human person.” My work is not about how I experience love. It is about how I allow love to experience me. That is the very definition of my work.

Passions was a work of the heart. So is Woman: Splendor and Sorrow. Yet, Woman has more dimensions to it. Some pieces are constructed via reconciliation between rationalism and some of its rival thoughts: idealism, and/or surrealism. It depends on the matter at hand.

I like Woman because in it I do not only allow love to experience me. I also give permission to feminism, and to other societal concerns to explore me.

From Woman: Splendor and Sorrow :

The day I understood I can win, I stepped into hell.
That day was the day I lost my innocence and with that the paradise.

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.

–

Early morning. I was in elementary school. A basic arithmetic problem was on the blackboard. The teacher asked M. to solve it. He did not know how. I was shocked. That day my entire life changed.

Late afternoon. Home. After much deliberation Mama asked: Gabriela, again, do you believe that everyone understands everything that you understand, and everyone can do what you can? Do you believe we all think the same?

Highly distraught, I answered:

Yes. Everyone can do what I can, and we all understand the world in the same way. Something wrong happened to M.

Papa was stunned. I could not grasp why. I was trying to make my parents understand a simple truth: we all feel and think the same. They did not want to listen. What was wrong with everyone?

That night in my bedroom I started questioning everything.

These days questioning is my second nature. My first does not exist anymore. Life experienced me.

draft

MasticadoresUSA update

There are several new posts up at MasticadoresUSA. For me MasticadoresUSA is a labor of love. Thank you to everyone who supports this site.

You can read the work of your fellow poets and follow the site here.

@Gabriela Marie Milton

Dear Readers,

Here are some of my summer reading recommendations. I haven’t ranked-ordered them. They are all excellent choices.

Summer recommendations:

Midnight With Words: Late Night Conversations in Poetry.

An anthology in which you will find poetry of stunning refinement, of beauty, and subtle meanings. An exceptional recital of verses that enchants the mind and the senses. This is one of the most impressive anthologies I’ve ever read.

Author: Lisa Alletson, Joe Barca, Cynthia Capri, Delilah Doe, Mark H. Fitzpatrick, Ty Gardner, Jeffrey Haskey-Valerius, Rebecca Hooper, Andy MacGregor, Jared Mulhair, Antonia Wang, and Wanjiku Wanjiru.

A Ferryman and the Sea Witch by D. Wallace Peach

Enter a world of fantasy, and with that the mesmerizing writing style of D. Wallace Peach. The book has a fascinating plot, passages of powerful imagery, and emblematic characters; in short the real ingredients of a bestseller.

Visit Diana’s site here.

The Anthropocene Hymnal anthology is here.

Please do not forget that you can order now The Anthropocene Hymnal anthology. The Anthology is “a poetic response to the joint crises of climate change and biodiversity loss.” (Ingrid Wilson, ed.) Read more on Ingrid Wilson’s site.

Crossroads (Winds of Love) by Jude Itakaly

A dazzling collection of poetry written by a young author. Let’s listen to him:

“I wrote Crossroads for all who have not found romantic love and are on the threshold of giving up on it, for all who have love and may be about to give it up, and for all who have been wounded gravely by love and are scared of ever trying it again. It is a companion that stirs memory in reminiscent and also horrific ways only to finally awaken hope and new life in us, where the best love may come to us.”

Jude’s landing page

Update on my upcoming collection of poetry Woman: Splendor and Sorrow

For those of you who are interested in my upcoming collection of poetry Woman: Splendor and Sorrow my publisher and I decided we will not open it for pre-order. The book will be published on July 31. Both versions e-book and paperback will be available via Amazon. I will post the links on July 31.