SELECTED POEMS
By Sarah Gambito

from

Aiice James Books, Farmington, Maine
© 2004
www.alicejamesbooks.org

PASSAGE

I saw the best songs of my magician. A girl, three girls pay this toll
out on macaw naval bases. Subic/Clark/Olongapo. These were the
splinted wings.

I crawled to the other side of the cage.

This was not safe as the Fabergé recesses of men out on liberty are
never safe. Future my grandmothers— feeling soldiers with big
cola and a limited view of All You Can Eat. If you can’t eat it.
Throw it out. My girl hungry. My girl learning the sweet sword.
Big arcs of molten.

I mean her country big-bottomed and an embarrassment at the
Beauty Pageant of Worthwhile. Who smiled too much and wrote
to me every night.

Tomorrow I will not be a maid.

Whose husbands were whacked off at the knee. Holding the
brown bell of revolution and the lantern of disgust. One day
my land will be mine and will pass through my generations like a last
view of the flowering oasis.

Who hated their own supernatural but nevertheless bade me lift
up my voice for blistering America. Who tore out their own hair
for lack of a less hurtful affection and with these strands spun my
traje de luces that I might face the bull of inadequacy with the
anger of many generations silenced and friendless and witchless.

Paloma, I’m with you in New York where you are madder than I am.
I’m with you in New York where I am only a reader.
I’m with you in New York where my readership
beseeches me, buys me the books.
I’m with you in New York where what’s yours is mine.

© Sarah Gambito

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