Poetry by Cara Persico

Three amazing poems by Hartford’s Cara Persico.

Not Enough

I don’t know enough about the world to write poetry.

I don’t know about foreign lands and broken bridges
and the pages of history I never turned in high school-
Maybe I should have turned them.

I don’t know how to write fiction; I think fiction,
I am fiction–

its potential string of words
grabbing me into a black widow’s web,
tantalizing that soon I shall die, or it shall die
Or at least suffer from the slow sting and poison.

I don’t know about anaphoras and hyperboles and
all the words we assign to movement trying to explain
the inexplicable quickening heartbeat and waves
of hot blood flooding into our veins as if we suddenly
feel ourselves alive and this is the first time we noticed
all day.

It’s lucky if we notice at all.

Writhing With(in) Ink

This pigment creeps;
It turns my pallid skin into
shades of smudged charcoal,
Breathing Black.
Ink.

I’m sinking in this puddle,
my body a dying star
collapsing in on itself
only to expand again and diffuse
into the universe

I wonder if you notice
the ampersand of my mouth
every breath giving birth
to letters and numbers
forming mushroom clouds
beneath the ceiling–

Each breath is potential
every gaze a new word
melded somewhere between this life
and the unrealized

Cool finger tips caress along
my meridian lines

tracing out the next stanza
of a broken hearted widow
or a school girl named
Jaimie.

I writhe with(in) this ink
like a carbon copy pressed to metal,

the pressure subsides and all that is left
are faded imprints of the original

There’s a question mark on my forehead,
it refuses to break loose.

Mandarin Oranges

We were driving. We were more than driving, we were laughing and I was free. I opened my arms, my eyes, to the majestic autumn mountains, breathing in the faint taste of pumpkin patches, and smiling that I had been released of my prison.

It was cold. Too cold for the three-quarter length shirt I sported, hoping that if I dressed like it was still September that it would be. I held my breath; if only to swallow this inevitably ending moment, opening my palms to grasp what this freedom felt like.

Words like Keppra and Chemo didn’t exist there, the grass wouldn’t understand it, and the wind wouldn’t allow it.

I took pictures just in case one day I couldn’t remember how the cerulean sky was painted and the way the world spun, but it is so ingrained in my being, you can see Polaroid’s of it every time I blink.

We ended where we started; back in the car, laughing. I rolled the windows down, wanting to drive with the breeze until it would be too cold for this sort of thing. I drove about a mile before I realized we were both shivering uncontrollably and that it already was too cold.

I guess when I asked God for a favor I had to be more specific. I always seem to leave the most important detail out- that what I asked for would stay.
But it’s okay that you didn’t stay, because now words like Keppra and Chemo don’t exist here, and you left a trail of mandarin oranges.

Chris Collins

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