Poem of the Month

Solitaries

A half-golden window. Lined, shadow-speckled
The gray corona’s eye lay, paling at the sill
There must have been roaches, cicadas, air, squirrels,
Oriels and ants almost dancing to breezes.
Higher in fronds of gold, among stones,
Youth among the many-hidden lives.

Her yard under years, a foot stirred the stones.
Though she is planted in the morning room.
There God and his greenery are dreams powered down.
In this little box streams the golden rod
The air in nodes of hay, poking
The finer draperies. The art is rich.

Here is ache in shinola, nomadism canned –
And here death isn’t as dark. Just a flash, a dampening.
Embarrassingly numb, an easy affliction. Solitaries
keep hours on this side of the glass, knees buckled
Eyes set to horrible peacefulness, metered and
round, blue, discernable only as a tear
in the fabric of the reclining chair by the ottoman.

-Nina Alvarez

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2.14.09 etre-vouloir-dire

To be tired; tied to oblivion. To be outfoxed by mediocrity. Seduced by law. To be the last sure thing you knew, and to let that go, trading it in for tighter straps that only sometimes worked.

To be so full of something, call it conviction, that you knew language would be yours. To be so full of something to say, and to not say it, to not know what it is or what it needs, to be blocked from the heart up.

To want, more than anything, to say something real, Realer than real. To say it all and say it once and say it.

To say how hard it is, all of it. Every ounce of it.

To say how slow it is, how long, how the small things that breath is us become shallower.

To say how much like a dream, like a play. How real we believe our acting to be, how vague our lines, how indecipherable our motivation. How quickly we can turn farce into fantasy, parody into paradise, and then back again. And how we are always poised for the turn, whether we admit it or not.

To say that I once was…something. Alive, bold, barren of tedium, a biter of flesh, a caller of ancient names. To say that I gave it up for a more restful night, for the paradigm sold to me in a package of virtues. To say I was eclipsed by what I was.

To say I don’t need you, stander on this stage. You in your purple garments, you with one hand to a powdered lady singing falsetto, and one eye to me with my broom and bodice. I don’t need to be so consumed in the play as to betroth myself to vapors.

-Nina Alvarez

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