The invisible insect, all green, is alive, incredibly, running happily, his angelic big toe shimmering on white paper while I write, and I don’t touch him, for fear he’ll break, and I can’t see how he’s made, or if he has eyes: they’d be like needle points. (Could he be a gigantic magician in disguise?) And to think that he eats to serve his weakness. Who knows what good things he eats! Who knows the world as he sees it! Perhaps small is beautiful, the way a pea is.
Infinitesimo
L’invisibile insetto tutto verde che corre felice e ben vivo, nel luccichio delle sue trasparenti alucce d’angelo, sulla carta bianca mentre scrivo, io non lo tocco, per paura che si rompa, e non riesco a vedere come è fatto e se ha gli occhi: saranno come due punte d’ago (che sia qualche travestito giantesco mago?). E pensare che anche lui mangia, si servirà d’una sua lunga pompa. Chissà che cose buone mangerà! Chissà, il mondo, come lo vedrà! Forse piccolo e bello come un grano di pisello.
Elisa Gonzalez and Charleen McClure are the poetry recipients of this year's Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Awards, which recognize emerging women writers of exceptional promise. "Our 2020 award winners are reframing and revisioning our world and bringing it into focus in important and inventive ways. Their work is surprising, inspiring, challenging, and deeply personal."
Poetry Daily stands with the Black community. We oppose racism, oppression, and police brutality. We will continue to amplify diverse voices in the poetry world. Black Lives Matter.
“'The Wake of Maria De Jesus Martinez' was one attempt to write, as form, a casta-like poem, where each section of the lyric was itself of a different time and space, yet, linked through repeating phrases. As the lyric progressed, the work began to be less 'pictorial' and relied more and more on sound: the emotional labor of the poem was performed/rendered through its music."
