The clock ticks back and forth
As an old woman swats a fly.
Her years of hunger are “shooed away”.
Her hands outstretched christ-like at times
Yet offering nothing but false stigmatas.
She floats through a crowd
As if an Italian parade for the Blessed Virgin.
She croons aftermath ballads in the shower.
Strangers hum this same melody on the streets.
Some whistle this woe shining shoes.
All of them alive despite
This death in the morning repertoire.
A pit in her stomach where she seeks him no more.
She rises above the soot from where she once lived.
Everything is like Patterson, full of mills, polluted,
She touches herself, recalls a time when she tasted
Her sea foam, the antithesis of Venus,
The banality of Greek myths. She had a child-
Like soul, told by her first love that gullible
Was not in the dictionary. And so she believed him.
Looked it up after the crime had been committed.
Sometimes she swims with the wax wings
Of a drowned thrillseeker. Just another soul
Looking towards the sunlight—never away,
Risking burnt pupils in a storm:
Why I cry, singed, Why gravity pulls
The sweet song of my inner sun-
Dial towards the center of the earth.

(Pavlov Neruda Press)