Long Listed for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Awards
Absent
An invisible, unstoppable power stitches actions
we don’t want
in our hands; it changes the street signs, it
places a locked door where, last night, lust
reigned
and when we once tried to escape it our face
was ripped on a wall of broken bottles and
sharp dreams.
Strange that we, strangers to our lives, were
brought from a dream unfolding somewhere
else; when others needed us misfortune
stopped them; when we felt the need for them
our ego or our sin stopped us; our sin was
that we longed for so much, we did so little,
and we lived in isolation, where? Let
the others look for us in our overcoats; many
followed a career as one covers a black hole
with his palm.
Have we truly existed? Who knows! Yet,
tomorrow, to be sure, let the mason incise,
for better or worse, on our tombstone:
they were honest, although Absent.
Libros Libertad 