Omens by Cecilia Llompart

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend September 26, 2016   Omens   Cecilia Llompart

The dead bird, color of a bruise, and smaller than an eye swollen shut, is king among omens.   Who can blame the ants for feasting?   Let him cast the first crumb.   ~   We once tended the oracles.   Now we rely on a photograph   a fingerprint a hand we never saw   coming.   ~   A man draws a chalk outline first in his mind   around nothing   then around the body of another man.   He does this without thinking.   ~   What can I do about the white room I left behind? What can I do about the great stones   I walk among now? What can I do   but sing.   Even a small cut can sing all day.   ~   There are entire nights                                   I would take back.   Nostalgia is a thin moon,                                                               disappearing   into a sky like cold,                                          unfeeling iron.   ~   I dreamed   you were a drowned man, crown of phosphorescent, seaweed in your hair,   water in your shoes. I woke up desperate   for air.   ~   In another dream, I was a field   and you combed through me searching for something   you only thought you had lost.   ~   What have we left at the altar of sorrow?   What blessed thing will we leave tomorrow?            Copyright © 2016 Cecilia Llompart. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “I’ve always been fascinated by the archetype of the blind seer or soothsayer, and the fact that my first name means ‘blind.’ That coupled with the vivid, quasi-prophetic dreams I have suffered from ever since I was a child, were natural entryways into this poem. These are turbulent times—with forces of light and dark pressing in on all sides—and I often think about how helpless we feel, not knowing who to turn to for truths. Written during a time when my own life felt tossed at sea, when I was learning to lean a closer ear to my own heart, this poem feels both burdened by seeing, and cracked open by hope.” —Cecilia Llompart   Cecilia Llompart is the author of The Wingless (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2014). She currently teaches freelance creative writing workshops and divides her time between the United States and France.   Photo credit: Marcella Marie Gettel Poetry by Llompart   The Wingless (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2014)  "Resolution" by Lia Purpura "Daymark" by Ossian Foley "At Night the States" by Alice Notley Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038