Lydia Cortes
Find the Form to Love Your Life (Section 1)
Life with/in a form better Than no Form I can riff make a ditty To which I can sing Better yet to dance to Move Shake this only body this Old bones old teeth arteries Old veins Twist Around in the casket of my bod Like vines I’m the fruit of my loom Make Wine with me or Dine me then wind me up Blow me away with the wind Of your diaphragm Do you think You’d ever be able to do I’m not A little girl you know no little woman I was once a little a small a tiny infant Even tinier was I in my mother’s womb At one point I was no doubt just a cell Or two did I love myself then so infinitesimal Almost nonexistent yet I did even then I know it’s so I was there somewhere in The cask the casket of my mother’s bod Su cuerpo cuero quiero mi vida I want my life I love my life
Editor’s Note: “Find the Form to Love Your Life” is a long poem that we are posting in eleven sections on consecutive Saturdays, beginning today.
Lydia Cortes is the author of the poetry collections Lust for Lust (Ten Pell Books, 2002) and Whose Place (Straw Gate Books, 2009). Her work appears in the anthologies Puerto Rican Poetry: An Anthology from Aboriginal to Contemporary Times (U Mass Press, 2006) and Breaking Ground: Anthology of Puerto Rican Women Writers in New York 1980-2012 (Editorial Campana, 2012). Recent work has appeared in Upstreet and on the Black Earth Institute’s 30 Days Hath September poetry feature curated by Patricia Spears Jones.
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