The Dancer

The Dancer by Gabriela Mistral

The dancer now is dancing
the dance of losing it all.
Whatever she said, she lets it go,
fathers and brothers, gardens and fields,
the sound of her river, the roads,
her fireside tale, her face,
her name, and the games of her childhood,
as if she were letting everything fall
from her back, her breast, her soul.

On the edge of night and winter
laughing, she dances total poverty.
In the world she's winnowing away,
the loving, hating, smiling, killing world,
earth crushed to a bloody vintage,
night with its sleepless excesses,
and the ache of homelessness.

Without name or creed or people, stripped
or everything and of herself, she gives from the core
beautiful, pure, with flying feet.
Shaken like a tree and in the eye
of the tornado, she bears witness.

She isn't dancing the flight of albatross,
salt-spattered, sport of the waves,
nor the lift and bow
of reed-beds in the wind,
nor the wind that fills the sail,
nor the smile of the high grass.

She isn't called by her baptismal name.
She loosed herself from caste and flesh,
buried the beat of her blood
and the ballad of her adolescence.

Without knowing it we throw our lives
over her like a poisonous red garment.
And so she dances while vipers
crawl on her, biting, quick and free,
and let her drop like a tattered wreath,
the banner of a defeated army.

Sleepwalking, turned into what she hates,
she dances on, not knowing she is changed,
her gestures scattering and gathering,
gasping out gasping breaths,
cutting the air that brings her no relief,
alone, a whirlwind, foul and pure.

We, we are the gasping of her breast,
her bloodless pallor, the wild cry
she sends from west to east,
the red fever of her veins,
the loss of the God of her childhood.

En el cafe

In the Cafe by Clementina Suarez

Every day I sit in the cafe
as if I could push time ahead.
Everything around us is misery and suffering
even the way we speak.

There are those
who hope that someone
will appear
to pay for their cup of coffee.
(My God, fifteen cents.)

Women worn out from life
with the true weariness of the flesh...

This immense solitude, this absence, when does it attack?
Where does the drama begin or end?
It would be enough just to close one's eyes
and enjoy seeing one's self
close, so close.

In fact who isn't happy that way
Like a peaceful sky
Still and deaf amid the blood's turbulence.
What a restful life. Will I ever know it?
No, it's not what I want,
I don't want to let go of my anguish.
I don't want a prison for my soul,
but prefer to swim in the shadows.

I tell myself:
I have to grow,
inevitably
children stand
before me

I am barefoot with them
looking for bread
in my small hands.

Your Eyes, Moorish Slaves

Your Eyes, Moorish Slaves by Delmira Agustini

In your coldness were ensconced
The great Moorish slaves;
Dark and shining in golds
From a distance they guarded me.

And, devouring, they dreamt
In me, I know not what treasures...
Behind the crystal of tears
They guarded and threatened.

They beat angelic wings,
They pounded satanic hands,
Their two strange screens;

And when I look upon them coquettishly,
Their fiery halberds
Pierced my entrails.

It is said
women give [and give and give]
voice and expression
to the oppressed.

I find a hunger in my belly for
something of substance. Of value.
That tastes like it smells
and hurts like it bleeds.
For reality, for honesty, for truth.


---------------


your voices echo across
the land and sea into our
conscience and the condition
of your child and your fellow man
tells some truth beyond
me and the sun rises here
just like it might there but
our women rise to the sun
in a different way

we are all rising in the sun
and speaking of the ways in which we
wish to live- like saints we sing
the song of woman or the song
of desperation
we will rise and we will speak of
how the sun rises slowly upon
the backs of the beautiful
bent-double masses of the
world who taste no bread and
work the calluses into their
hands only to find that they
will never taste the extremes
of what it means to be free

she woke with the sun and
painted her lifetime upon the
washing stand while singing
about another land
where the dancers smile
and the coffee is free,
and how the slaves sang
until midnight of the night of
their liberation

she awoke among the undeniable
truths of her life and spoke to
the farthest shores

An Interesting Idea

Literary Journal on the streets:

http://isreads.com/


hmmmm.....

The Way it is Now

in the blooming summers breeze

we begin to see an opposite side
of things we thought of you

i cannot stand the stamping circles
the world demands to make
and yet this brings to brink
the reality of [in]sanity

double taken reflection against
the tanning skin backdrop of
my shoulders and arms and
my waist is taking for granted
the age of bud of body

somehow some days i still am
waiting for the rest to be removed
without apologies and the lead
to set back into my spine

we will never be the same

today is near revolution
as i stand upon my newborn rock
and paint the old pains and pictures
i used to reiterate to stop
the endless questions

what does it mean to you if
i am walking alone and smiling
and never looking back to
what my life whispered in my ear
and i am not listening anymore to
the reasoning or rhetoric of the
cyclical life they sit upon like
a thrown entitled to no one
but your royal high-ness

the high-ness and the near-ness
of my world and yours is beyond
the spectrum of my once imagined
life and somehow it still feels
like i'm chasing stars and strangers
in hopes that they are the one
dream or the one to fill the
expectations of experience

but i am not and i am smiling
because i believe in the healing
of the truth and the revealing
of who we really are

they are the same clothes
i just wear them differently























http://ochira.deviantart.com/art/back-48940604

Orphaned Words

where did you go when you
told me you were lonely
and held your breath just to
remember
but I remember
the time you blew
away the entire dandelion

how that dream never came true

we wait to be dreaming so
we can quench that thirst
and put it in glass jars
for later

i don't want to lose
the desire

we contemplate the collections
and slowly realize
once we move away from them we
find the bottom of ourselves

circles of glass bottles
plotting their revenge

the dead bumblebee lays in front
of my door with his six
legs in the air

i wait- he's still alive

a million first page poems
will be written in my sleep
but will never reach
the paper to save them














http://arbelwen.deviantart.com/art/Bottles-48214206

We're Walking in Circles

you found me the first time
and i am holding my breath because
i hope you will find me a second time

and we will walk like foxes
through the fields and urban slum
we will walk and i will tell you
exactly why i'm still standing
here watching you like you were
the greatest sight on earth and
your eyes are my human being


the window panes were watching
but we swore we were alone
they were watching and we
were cursing the ice under
our feet but we kept on
going forward forever until we
could remember the trellises of
the ice castles

I drew the ice castle when
I was five and was sitting at the
picnic table out back where
you were stung by bees and
our yellow labrador yelped
it scared me how she cried
and I cried and stubbed my toe

our yellow labrador came with us
to our new home and we built her
a new house and put insulation
in the walls
we put it in the walls and hoped
she would stay warm
but she always seemed desperate
to share our life indoors



when you last took the trip
across the lake you forgot
to bring your camera and when
we crossed the river we found
the duck hunting lodge where
I could look out and see to
the other side of the river

i took your picture from
the slit in the wall
meant for shooting ducks
i took your picture while you
held up the sledgehammer

an orphaned sledgehammer waited
across the river for me to stand up
and pace my way across as i lost
years and fragility
as i lost my child eye and i
crossed the river i wanted only
to have a taste of the side that
for so long i could never reach


our footprints revealed our location
but i'm not walking in sand and
we are not walking in snow so how
will you find me if there are
no footprints and you can't remember
where you left me


i am leaving soon and you
are headed towards the rest
but i don't know
where you will be and i want to
remember you like you were last night

we have been standing like the
bravest men on the front lines
even though i'm a woman

i am the woman and i am slowly
learning that i always was
and i am the butterfly
how much of a woman has been released
and celebrated as we find new depths
to our celebrated life and
how will I ever find you across the lake
if there are no footprints to follow

i'm not walking in sand
and we are not walking in snow
so how will you ever
find me


i'll always leave you verses
to follow

























http://browse.deviantart.com/photography/?order=24#order=9&q=frozen+river