Do Not Speak of the Dead by Cecilia Llompart

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend June 30, 2015   Do Not Speak of the Dead   Cecilia Llompart

“They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds.” —Mexican Proverb     I was born among the bodies. I was hurried forward, and sealed a thin life for myself.   I have shortened my name, and walk with a limp. I place pebbles in milk and offer   them to my children when there is nothing else. We can not live on cold blood alone.   In a dream, I am ungendered, and the moon is just the moon having a thought of itself.   I am a wolf masked in the scent of its prey and I am driven—hawk like—to the dark   center of things. I have grasped my eager heart in my own talons. I am made of fire,   and all fire passes through me. I am made of smoke and all smoke passes through me.   Now the bodies are just calcified gravity, built up and broken down over the years.   Somewhere there are phantoms having their own funerals over and over again. The same   scene for centuries. The same moon rolling down the gutter of the same sky. Somewhere   they place a door at the beginning of a field and call it property. Somewhere, a tired man   won’t let go of his dead wife’s hand. God is a performing artist working only with   light and stone. Death is just a child come to take us by the hand, and lead us gently away.   Fear is the paralyzing agent, the viper that swallows us living and whole. And the devil,   wears a crooked badge, multiplies everything by three. You—my dark friend. And me.            Copyright © 2015 by Cecilia Llompart. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “I began this poem while reading a book about the sordid history of the persecution of witches—which is really just another way of saying the persecution of women—and it continued to develop in light of the continued unrest and very necessary protests that have punctuated the past few months. It also serves as a kind of meditation on death and on crossing over and on loosening the grip of fear on our lives. Three days after I finished the poem, my grandfather passed away and my grandmother had a vision of a child taking him by the hand at the moment of his last breath.” —Cecilia Llompart   Cecilia Llompart is the author of The Wingless (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2014). She currently teaches creative writing to K-12 students and divides her time between Puerto Rico and Florida.   Photo credit: Marcella Maria Gettel Poetry by Llompart   The Wingless (Carnegie Mellon Press, 2014) "Mouth Full of Grounds" by Justin Marks "Dream in Which I Meet Myself" by Lynn Emanuel "Friend" by Jean Valentine 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