Mother’s crimson leather bags
Crammed with saint cards
And tiny glass bottles of liquor.
The bright stitch
Of God’s final coming.
Dirt and dregs, silt and stars.
The sweet song
Of poverty
Rinsing through me
Like the memory
Of a dream.
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In the rooms of a rundown palace
You said, Ruined. You said, Princess.
You said nothing to me
For three long weeks.
The color of that room
Is eel-black.
When I was a girl and still
German, I stood alone
At the end of the sea.
You may have loved me then
I sent a message through the cages
Of a great whale’s teeth.
For three weeks, I did not sleep.
I set jars of sweet milk and baskets
Of bright berries and red
Marmalade outside your door
In the dream
Where you come to me
I kiss your mouth
Tasting the secret
Letters of your history.
I swear
Somewhere in Siberia
A godly ocean of bison
Still roam free.
You, kneeling before me,
In this,
The last and final room.
Copyright © 2013 by Cynthia Cruz. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-A-Day on July 19, 2013. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.
Copyright © 2013 by Cynthia Cruz. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-A-Day on July 19, 2013. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.
Cynthia Cruz is the author of How the End Begins (Four Way Books, 2016) and Wunderkammer (Four Way Books, 2014).