洞月亮 Cave Moon Press July 2019

FEATURED POET: Claudia Castro Luna was born in El Salvador. She received a BA in Anthropology from the University of California, Irvine, an MA in Urban Planning from University of California, Los Angeles, and an MFA in poetry from Mills College. She is the author of Killing Marías (Two Sylvias Press, 2017) and the chapbook This City (Floating Bridge Press, 2016). In 2019, Castro Luna was named an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. She currently teaches at Seattle University and serves as the poet laureate of Washington State.

MYTHIC

A country with borders of bread

A country where laws taste like milk

A country where I can walk without fear

A country where walls don’t bring tears

A country where hope is not fiction

A country where huger is thin

A country where children don’t rot in jails

A country whose flag no one needs to defend

A country whose heart is its coin  

A country where war is naught

A country where days begin with song

That, is where I want to belong

ON CITIZENSHIP

I want full citizenship

when I die

none of this

you are legal

only when convenient

when cheap labor is wanted

when votes are sought

In Death’s camp

there is no Temporary Protected Status

DACA, J-1 or H-2 visas

there are no second chances

short sentences, pardons,

no permit renewals,

no political expiations

No. Dead is dead.

As ghost, I’ll own

the full spectrum of me

if I desire a foul green mouth

then so be it

I’ll make myself visible and invisible

whenever I want

be evil, if I so choose

or tender, mother to newborn tender

Ah, when I am dead as dead

boneless, toothless, wordless

wondering somber valleys

among drafts of shadows

when my pride is but an emerald

streak in Quetzal’s royal feathers

and my cry lodges in mockingbird’s throat

what mother of love will I then be!

Better in death to inhabit all of me

than half dead living, living afraid of living

Yes! I want full rights for the ghost of me

not just a temporary worker permit

it shouldn’t be that hard

for in life, I’ve never seen

anyone queuing up for the privilege

of crossing to the other side

WRITE YOUR POEM!

Prompt tickler I.

"for in life, I’ve never seen

anyone queuing up for the privilege

of crossing to the other side"

How much punch is in your punchline?

Good or bad, the prosaic nature of poetry in our era begs an ending.

In a joke it makes people laugh.  While that is an option, there are other days it just needs something else.  Read her poem again and see how you can build one of your poems to this powerful a punchline.

Prompt ticker II.

"A country..."

"I hear America singing..." (Walt Whitman)

Analyze the boiled down nature of this poem and compare it to Whitman's view of our world in this geography.  How can you use repetition in just as powerful a manner with a tightened set of metaphors.  Look at how carefully Claudia pivots with "where" and "whose" to bring variety to the ideas, while giving us a constant chant of hope, pathos and desire after Whitman's world.