Lorna Dee Cervantes' first book of poetry, Emplumada, received  an American Book Award. Her next, From the Cables of Genocide: Poems On Love and Hunger, won both the Paterson Prize for Poetry and the Latino Literature Award. She publishes widely in literary magazines and anthologies, including the prestigious  Norton Anthologies (for American Literature, Poetry, Contemporary Poetry, and Women's Literature).  A five-volume poetry pentych of new work, DRIVE: The First Quartet, appeared January 1 from Wings Press to positive reviews in Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Speakeasy Magazine, and debuted with a reading/ performance at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC. She lives in Boulder where she is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Colorado.  Photo credit:  Bryce Milligan. Trinity University, San Antonio, TX, Oct. 17, 2005.
 

Gut roped in the sky,
you and I, an anomaly,
a rarer occurrence. You kick
the wind up to wind the threads.
Your light, a burgeoning there
among the dark filters.
Twisted fist of my making,
you, some squeezing finger,
a trigger of hair sensitive
to what is not there. Where
are your hands in this gripping
of the neck? Where, your charm?
Your cauldron? Ominous in appearance,
your frown, the tornado
of your furrowed brow. I wait
for your aftermath
like an afterbirth, a thick subsiding.
The sinking air, whisper of crystal—
pouchlike love, a yearning back down
to the earth. I hold you here, suspended
in rain, the descending choir, the anvil
strain. And, I am lost to you
on the underside, still holding
this woven nest of warm passion
and hanging.

I dreamed a canyon of overnight
howling, the risk of water, the expectation
of passing ravens, the wind against the thaw.

I have made the astonishing
white-capped flood, refused
the freeze, trusting the landscape
of snow — no information circling,
waiting to change; nameless; drifting.

One dawn, a thousand horses
charging the blanket of waves,
the dream — a pregnant growing,
a standing by myself,
offering the weight.

© Lorna Dee Cervantes 2006.