Included in my poetry collection Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings.
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perhaps I was bewitched by the North Star or by a ballad as dateless as my blood geography of feelings populates unwanted interludes my eyes, the nests of dewy grass and leaves emerald eyelashes flaunt black taffeta chirps between my fingers like piano keys inside my soul your kisses soar soft lilac tones like prayers of the youngest nun perhaps because I read your poetry last night and cut my soul between a stanza and a strife perhaps a child played with a kite a kingdom for a sup maybe it was the wind that woke me up
you cut a piece of my hair it curls between your index finger and your thumb in the distance silhouetted against the snow knotted kerchiefs the dress of a woman who insinuates herself on people’s skin like mold on walls in the little house hidden by oak trees in the unmade bed where every night you sleep alone I listen to the mineral eyes of a saint while between your palms the Little Prince plays with white plumes signs that birds exist the winter buries us deep in the ground dissolved our bodies gestate until the birth of spring when on the top of an unspoken hill you and I will bloom into two trees whose fruit will feed the children of the world
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Happy Holidays to all my followers. May your 2021 be fabulous. Love Gabriela
Scents of linden trees illuminated by an old oil lamp. The night is me. I am the night where love delights dwell. Shed you skin and come with me where minutes melt like chocolate on the tongue of a child. You, sweetness from beyond the body, what can one say about you?
I am grateful to Mushtaq Bala – the Editor-In-Chief of KASHMIR PEN – for inviting me to publish my work in his newspaper.
Fight
Purple roots cover all trails that go to the foothills. Veins that the earth pushed to the surface. I smell lavender. Your words grow in the breeze like a dough under the whispers of the moon. For three thousand years, sung by the poets of this land, the naked shoulder of the mountain reigned in stillness. The sky made itself invisible into a wooden box where my grandmother kept her rings: memories of loves that now fit in a small chamber. The sea and the afternoon’s breaths eclipse the taste of your colors. The blue that slipped between the same branches of the old poplar tree stares me in the eyes. Clouds ossify the fight of the earth against the earth. Between my palms the body of a thin yellow candle. I remember walking on a street where children were hungry and had no shoes. I took my shoes off and wiped my tears with the back of palms. Under my eyes the skin became red and rough. I wrote I love you on your left cheek. I threw all the silver coins I had onto the dust of the street. They were meant for the dead. Let them help the living. I remember your hand caressing the silk of my dress. I purge all memories except one that belongs to the future. You and I chanting to the incarnation of love under a tree on the island where I was born. The island where it is always spring and the earth that does not fight against the earth. Did I tell you I was born on an island?
Fight was published together with If Only … Autumn in the 19, 2020 November edition of KASHMIR PEN.
Thank you to Kevin Watt for including my poem Moonlight Love in his new anthology Words of Power.
Here is my poem:
Bones, blood, flesh trapped in a brilliant moonlight. The sand of the shore carried faraway by translucent tongues of water. Around me the mint grows taller than the trees; lassitude turning from gold to red. Eyes become the locus where the desert and the sea meet. Imprinted on my body the number twelve; the twelve horses of the sun-chariot. He, the seller of time, looks at me. His voice penetrates the membranes of my cells. One hour of impossible love for two dimes. I, who can foresee the future, buy. The hour wraps around my hips like a passion vine around a tree. For a second you, the lover of the visible world, hesitate. Streets inundated by the sweet smell of citrus. Arms hugging a void. You cannot eat that citrus and you cannot touch me. Moonlight love, remind me, why did I buy you?
Motto I get drunk on love, charity, and passion. These are my professions.
I walk into the three days we spent together.
On the first day, a nude silence wraps around my lips. Shortly after I can hear the noise of wine poured into glasses. The hour to get drunk on love has come. I touch your skin and another you is born. Birds invade the sky. A banquet of candles floods the streets. A white thread ties my blood vessels at the exact moment when a religious procession walks by.
On the second day, drunk on charity, my sights descend upon the earth. The dirty hands of the woman… Please continue reading WP here
Thank you to Flavio Almerighi for the beautiful Italian translation of my poem The Ides of October. Grazie di core, Flavio.
I paid for all the happiness that was bestowed upon us by the Ides of October. I used to feel the presence of the child all around me. A woman said I should pick a piece of slough cast by a snake and wear it against my skin. I did it. Flushed as a young peach every sunset became a resurrection. Roses wrapped around my waist and later in June the child was born.
A new October sets our pictures on the Spanish chest. Emotions animate your cheeks. Every night above the trees the moon nurses the stars. When I see cocoons of the larvae, I think silk as soft as the hair of the child. When I say I love you, I think death as the harbinger of birth. Your lips tremble and your voice flattens. I know you love me. With nude fingers the Ides of October betroth us again.
[Ides as the 15th day in March, May, July, and October according to the Roman calendar]
Italian Version
Ho pagato per tutta la felicità che ci è stata concessa dalle Idi di ottobre. Sentivo la presenza del bambino tutto intorno a me. Una donna ha detto che avrei dovuto scegliere un pezzo di melma lanciato da un serpente e indossarlo sulla pelle. L’ho fatto. Arrossata come una giovane pesca, ogni tramonto diventava una risurrezione. Le rose si avvolsero intorno alla mia vita e più tardi a giugno nacque il bambino.
Un nuovo ottobre pone le nostre foto sul petto spagnolo. Le emozioni animano le tue guance. Ogni notte sopra gli alberi la luna nutre le stelle. Quando vedo i bozzoli delle larve, penso che la seta sia morbida come i capelli del bambino. Quando dico che ti amo, penso che la morte sia il presagio della nascita. Le tue labbra tremano e la tua voce si appiattisce. Io so che mi ami. Con le dita nude le Idi di ottobre ci fidanzano di nuovo.
[Idi come il 15 ° giorno di marzo, maggio, luglio e ottobre secondo il calendario romano]
How beautiful you made my loneliness with your love letters and your ceaseless colors that burn my eyes every time I look at them.
I am forever in your power because I was brought into this world by your imagination. I am your creation.
I feed on the same sea that nursed us when we were children.
I am the glue that holds together the baked sands stuck on your skin during torrid endless summers.
Sometimes I look like a four-leaf clover sitting on the lapel of your black coat on the 15th of every month.
Other times when it is dark you call me Selena and you make my twelve fingers knead your ecstasies and plant them in whispering tombs.
Your desires are the stage on which I dance, my hair unbraided, my first youth gone, my death date undetermined yet.
I thought nothing was about me. Everything was about you and your mind with its powerful sounds of rapid waves and its one thousand boats anchored in the same port.
Yet at 9am in the morning you said something that made me believe you became possessed by your own creation.
Green deep waters.
Is that true?
excerpt from my manuscript Remembrance of Love (working title)
I paid for all the happiness that was bestowed upon us by the Ides of October.
I used to feel the presence of the child all around me.
A woman said I should pick a piece of slough cast by a snake and wear it against my skin.
I did it.
Flushed as a young peach every sunset became a resurrection.
Roses wrapped around my waist and later in June the child was born.
A new October sets our pictures on the Spanish chest.
Emotions animate your cheeks.
Every night above the trees the moon nurses the stars.
When I see cocoons of the larvae, I think silk as soft as the hair of the child.
When I say I love you, I think death as the harbinger of birth.
Your lips tremble and your voice flattens.
I know you love me.
With nude fingers the Ides of October betroth us again.
[Ides as the 15th day in March, May, July, and October according to the Roman calendar]
I can see the woman who assumes things. Every night she picks the flowers that I throw on the road: withered lilies of the valley. She wants to be me. She wants my blood. She does not know I rearranged the bell-shaped whites so no one else can breathe their sweet scents. No one else can be me. No one else can make you, you.
The woman puts the withered flowers in her bag.
A new moon rises over her left shoulder. Bad luck.
I shiver.
I rush to protect her.
I stumble.
Before he died my father said:
If you try to do justice to the wicked, you will forget to do justice to the virtuous. And if you forget to do justice to the virtuous you only work for yourself. That is the biggest sin of all.
I have to think again.
My poetry collection Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings is available on Amazon here . Passions featured in San Francisco Book Review Passions featured in Manhattan Book Review.
image: Sandratsky Dmitriy; Shutterstock; [link]
