"Seville" by Kendra DeColo

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend July 30, 2019   Seville   Kendra DeColo

Because the cathedral leaked yellow light onto cobblestones like a slit carton of milk. Because boxes of red wine emptied down the throat's swiveling street. Because the music of my footsteps like notes of ash. Because he curved like a question mark puncturing a flap of heaven. Because litros tucked in brown paper bags, two packs of Chesterfields a day, at the breakfast table, on the lip of a balcony. Because I woke in a shrine   of my own stickiness. Because his lips were aperitif. Because my father kissed his forehead outside the mosque, the taste of rum and rose petals. Because oranges bulging in coat pockets. Because the condom held against the light, swirling cities of children we would never conceive. Because it broke, the cartography of longing pulsed onto soft thigh. Because the long walk home chaperoned by stray dogs, the drunk's grief of the Guadalquivir, blue cough and jasmine rotting in my hair. Because I passed out in the bar bathroom and mistook the toilet for my mother's legs. Because the shard of glass in the singer's throat. Because he cried when he was happy. Because the thief looked me in the eyes and didn't take the purse. Because the petroglyphs of our hands wounded the white walls, how we made the world small, siphoning god's breath to sweeten the blood-flavored noon.            Copyright © 2019 Kendra DeColo. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 30, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets. About This Poem   "This poem is a goodbye letter to a city I loved, written years after leaving it. It is a love poem, a blood on the sheets, handprints asterisking the wall kind of poem. (I love how anaphora gives space to write desire without feeling monitored by a patriarchal gaze.) It is also, at its core, an ode to emergency contraception and the freedom a woman might have to be self-possessed—in love, in pleasure, or otherwise." —Kendra DeColo   Kendra DeColo is the author of My Dinner with Ron Jeremy (Third Man Books, 2016) and Thieves in the Afterlife (Saturnalia Books, 2014), selected by Yusef Komunyakaa for the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize. She is the recipient of a 2019 Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and she lives in Nashville, Tennessee. Photo Credit: Lindsey Rome Poetry by DeColo   My Dinner with Ron Jeremy (Third Man Books, 2016) "Assiduously" by Claudia Castro Luna "Not Doing Something Wrong Isn't the Same as Doing Something Right" by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz "[You Ask Me to Talk About the Interior]" by Carolina Ebeid July Guest Editor: Paul Guest   Thanks to Paul Guest, author of Because Everything Is Terrible (Diode Editions, 2018), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month's weekdays. Read a Q&A with Guest about his curatorial approach this month and find out more about our guest editors for the year. 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