Maria Castro Dominguez: Poetry (Western Voices 2021)

Bio: Maria Castro Dominguez is the author of 'A Face in The Crowd' her Erbacce–press winning collection and ‘Ten Truths from Wonderland’ (Hedgehog Poetry Press) a collaboration with poet Matt Duggan. She was the winner of the third prize in Brittle Star´s Poetry Competition in 2018. She was a finalist in the 2019 Stephen A DiBiase Poetry contest in NY and was highly commended in the Borderlines Poetry Competition in 2020. Her poems have appeared in many anthologies and journals such as Obsessed With Pipework, Apogee, The Long-Islander Huntington Journal, Popshot, PANK, Empty Mirror, The Chattahoochee Review and The Cortland Review.

 


A miracle is to be

 

a bee swimming in a garden

in a country in a planet,

a royal hoopoe singing

with its sharp tweezer beak.

 

A water-logged tortoise

treading on sand, neck curving

out of her shell, giving birth

to perfectly round ping-pong-ball eggs.

 

A night plane flying overhead

slicing a star for a moment;

a plane with a fly buzzing inside

travelling to another hemisphere.

 

A miracle is our belongings fitting

a case with wheels,

for days, for months and years

-wheels are another miracle-

 

is tasting the chocolate of a black sapote.

To touch you and believe, to not

touch you and still believe; a miracle

is to be alive one second.

 


 

Refuse Sacks

 

They gave me a transparent plastic bag

the last things he wore while breathing;

 

navy-blue pajamas and mottled socks

as if they had any value

as though they were what I should take home

not him.

 

Their insistence that I relieve them

of his things, props

I could no longer use

to enact our two-way drama.

 

What am I to do, I ask you, with his pajamas;

with these mountain socks, threadbare

where his big toes curled?

 

 


 

The Murmur of Mourning

 

grief has no chronology

wielding its edges

 

grief is a stuck needle 

scratching at the same place ⸺

 

the last time I saw you

a breathing tube tight in your mouth

 

a heart monitor echoing your heart

wild when I tightened your hand in mine

 

your half-read books inhaling dust

your phone that never rings me ⸺

 

grief is a liminal place flickering

an interstice between was and is

2 comments :

  1. surreal tense with Romantic feelings. Love every word!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mar├нa C. Dom├нnguezMarch 17, 2021 at 11:47 AM

    Thanks Dustin for your encouraging comment!

    ReplyDelete

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