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    Emplumada
    Emplumada
    Emplumada
    Ebook81 pages27 minutes

    Emplumada

    By Lorna Dee Cervantes

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Emplumada is Lorna Dee Cervantes’s first book, a collection of poems remarkable for their surface clarity, precision of image, and emotional urgency. Rooted in her Chicana heritage, these poems illuminate the American experience of the last quarter century and, at a time when much of what is merely fashionable in American poetry is recondite and exclusive, Cervantes has the ability to speak to and for a large audience.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Pittsburgh Press
    Release dateJan 15, 1982
    ISBN9780822979869
    Emplumada

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    4.5/5

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    • 5/5
      I just discovered my new favorite poem. My favorites were the ones she wrote on love. Very insightful.

    Book preview

    Emplumada - Lorna Dee Cervantes

    i

    Consider the power of wrestling

    your ally. His will is to kill you.

    He has nothing against you.

    UNCLE'S FIRST RABBIT

    He was a good boy

    making his way through

    the Santa Barbara pines,

    sighting the blast of fluff

    as he leveled the rifle,

    and the terrible singing began.

    He was ten years old,

    hunting my grandpa's supper.

    He had dreamed of running,

    shouldering the rifle to town,

    selling it, and taking the next

    train out.

                        Fifty years

    have passed and he still hears

    that rabbit just like a baby.

    He remembers how the rabbit

    stopped keening under the butt

    of his rifle, how he brought

    it home with tears streaming

    down his blood soaked jacket.

    That bastard. That bastard.

    He cried all night and the week

    after, remembering that voice

    like his dead baby sister's,

    remembering his father's drunken

    kicking that had pushed her

    into birth. She had a voice

    like that, growing faint

    at its end; his mother rocking,

    softly, keening. He dreamed

    of running, running

    the bastard out of his life.

    He would forget them, run down

    the hill, leave his mother's

    silent waters, and the sounds

    of beating night after night.

                         When war came,

    he took the man's vow. He was

    finally leaving and taking

    the bastard's last bloodline

    with him. At war's end, he could

    still hear her, her soft

    body stiffening under water

    like a shark's. The color

    of the water, darkening, soaking,

    as he clung to what was left

    of a ship's gun. Ten long hours

    off the coast of Okinawa, he sang

    so he wouldn't hear them.

    He pounded their voices out

    of his head, and awakened

    to find himself slugging the bloodied

    face of his wife.

                         Fifty years

    have passed and he has not

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