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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mónica de la Torre
Mónica de la Torre

Born and raised in Mexico City, Mónica de la Torre is co-editor, with Michael Wiegers, of the collection Reversible Monuments: Contemporary Mexican Poetry
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FURTHER READING
Poems by Mónica de la Torre
Demolition Derby
Migrating Birds
On Translation
The Script
Essays by Mónica de la Torre
Into the Maze: OULIPO
Related Poems
If There Is Something to Desire, 9, 17, 18
by Vera Pavlova
Poems about Desire and Wanting
At a Window
by Carl Sandburg
Continuity
by A. R. Ammons
For the Man with the Erection Lasting More than Four Hours
by John Hodgen
If There Is Something to Desire, 9, 17, 18
by Vera Pavlova
Reprise
by Deborah Brown
Screening Desire
by R. Zamora Linmark
To George Sand: A Desire
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Related Prose
Emerging Poet: On Mónica de la Torre
by Mary Jo Bang
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Driven by a Strange Desire  
by Mónica de la Torre

I. Before Breakfast


When the sun turns gray and I become tired
of looking at your many-colored shoes


I will give you balloons for all the holes
we speak too much to fill. Who believes


in air, nowadays? Or do you prefer tea
with the dried fruit I will have to throw out


the window of your room? Because I want
this to stop I want this to stop I want this


II. Towards Moorish Spain


To kill the dragons is a different thing
in my family there are only lizards.


In Sevilla--never famous for its lamps--
a dissected crocodile hangs from a roof.


The reptile, the Crown’s Byzantine gift. Its teeth
suspended in the air of the cathedral.


I stole a pair of shoes; but didn’t run far
from the orchard where water had women’s scent.


Thirst is not fear, thirst is not green, but has wings
like dragons, or airplanes. As oranges


in Sevilla, driven by a strange desire
to stay where they are. Floating. Suspended.


III. Towards Virgo

The Milky Way is not only expanding;
the Bang is not only a Bang. It is drifting


and being pulled away from, let’s say, something.
Because dark matter is ninety nine of what


there is and visible matter is so small
it clusters together and forms a Great Wall.


China and Spain and my eyes reading the paper.
We are still together, are we not, wondering if.



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Poem previously published in Fence magazine. Reprinted by permission.
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