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Little Spirits
By Gabriela Anaya Valdepeña

 

Kings betray their crowns, souls lie at the gates of hell to taste
The blood of knowledge. I have read your bones; I have written down
Your dreams, and for that you have banished me like a cold wife. The night

  Binds; the day is tangled in the web of forgetting; the heart is a maze where its own
Voice is lost. You are modest as clouds are thin; and yet it is you that lets me love, at last,
My several husbands, soft as hot wax, little spirits, both Frankenstein and monster.

  If you are confused, it is because the wind chimes sing death’s tango. Falter once,
You are mortal; twice you are God, who errs only to invade our beds. Time reaps
Its own straw, and anything you wish for me now is belated. But still, I’ll sleep

  Next to your heart-come-lately. You must dig up your own grave. Come back
And stand by your portrait of grace and lies. If I whisper death it is only that
Alive, I copulate with shadows. Oh, beg me to lie in shame, that you

  May exalt me. Empty my mirror of arrogance. Beauty, alone, swallows its own tongue;
Beside you it sings like Satan’s castrati. I cannot wait for you in the hills of time, the
Daisies grow bold and consume my ankles. Fire bid you good-bye, but now

  Repents its death, while the stars’ electric skeletons rake the sky. I will pry your
Fingers from your neck, and rest your hands on the shelf of my hips. We alone
Can contain love’s cicatrix. We alone reply

  To God’s lost voice, and guide the spirits back to the dark.

 

 


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