A Poem by Elisa Gonzalez
Author: Poetry Editor
May 1, 2017
This week, a poem by Elisa Gonzalez.
FURIES
Two great tits skirmishing
at the feeder.
*
Age five, eliminated
from musical chairs.
*
Bee, sighing out its stinger.
*
Age ten: seven days locked
in a blue room.
Daddy’s
doing.
*
What cures malaise.
*
Age sixteen.
Steak knife thrown
at Mama for—
lost now.
*
Willful forgetfulness.
*
Age twenty-one, listening
to a man discourse
over sweet Chardonnay:
No woman is really
bisexual, that’s all
for our benefit.
*
Concealed-carry license.
*
Lover waking me
to rattle
a confession out,
boxer’s hands
clasping my neck.
Age twenty-six.
*
What follows repentance.
*
Cigarette cast away
before it burns
itself out.
*
The faces of demons
in altarpieces.
*
Armor of the illustrious dead.
*
Naked Diana
after a man
lays eyes on her
independence.
*
Ages seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, etc.,
groped by a friend.
*
Age twenty-three, raped
by a friend.
What follows.
*
What follows
a drive
to the sea
in those
early hours
to kneel
and dig
my fingers
in night-cold
sand until
the sense
of uselessness
takes hold.
*
A lathe, spinning.
*
The famous wives of bad men:
Griselda, who must have desired
homicide, and Clytemnestra,
who went ahead and did it.
*
Abortion-clinic gauntlet:
signs beat the air
like an oak in a storm.
*
Jezebel. The mob
rips gold hoops
from her earlobes.
*
Insufficient funds.
*
What follows
a friend-no-longer
declaring himself
ally, no,
defender
of women,
thus suddenly beloved
on Facebook,
the closest thing
to victory I
can imagine.
In that moment
at least.
*
The love of God
in many parts of Old
and even New
Testaments
and of history.
*
The head that bows
stiff-necked
for God or Man.
The neck I bare to the knife.
*
The word freedom
used carelessly
or at all.
*
What rejects
the moon
as a subject for poetry.
*
What rejects
poetry—after all
a poor substitute
for pain.
*
Preceding lines, the pen
that made them,
the hand that did
more to ruin
than the mouth.
——
ELISA GONZALEZ is a queer Puerto Rican writer raised in the Midwest. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Barrow Street, Mississippi Review, Narrative, Prelude, Tin House Open Bar, and elsewhere. A graduate of Yale University and the New York University creative writing program, she has received support from the Norman Mailer Foundation and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She is a Fulbright Scholar in creative writing and lives in Warsaw, Poland.
