NOTE:

This poem was the co-winner of the

Dorothy Rosenberg Memorial Prize in Lyric Poetry

University of California, Berkeley

March 2008

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To graft the swells of parlance,

the venation of a rose,

a heart must sharply channel warmth

enabling the diablos to provoke.

No motors poise the mind,

chronicled by fact.

We are a sum of tears,

accoutered with sovereign cracks.

Vertigo! I stumble

through penmanship to hoist the dawn,

hoping listening to thumping

can break the dust’s inevitable throng.