What Rough Beast | Poem for March 3, 2019

Lydia Cortes
Find the Form to Love Your Life (Section 4)

Remember the fontanel the hole in your crown      That never quite closed your skull vulnerable      Ever since they poured the holy water right over      That venerable spot where things can be let out      But also let in let in the sun and the shine too don’t      Be stingy giving accommodations on the cheap to      Things to the best things which may or not be free      To be free you and me and the bees those that still      Survive to be and flee or fly or stay in one place hovering      In place when there’s something interesting to observe      To be near to to be part of to be a party to to party till      There’s no manana there’s only today only the now      Only the process forget the end the ends of the earth      Are there to be be you and me and be explored on      Streets of sesame and rogering on with the mister      The good mister the good guy who didn’t care if    You spoke English or not you were still worthwhile     

Editor’s Note: “Find the Form to Love Your Life” is a long poem that we are posting in eleven sections. While today’s section appears on a Sunday, most of the sections appear on consecutive Saturdays. 

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.

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.

Editor’s Note: “Find the Form to Love Your Life” is a long poem that we are posting in eleven sections on consecutive Saturday’sS