Poetry – Issue 12 | June 2011
Before You Go
by Deborah Diemont
Where the moon’s a canoe on a slate-blue lake,
and the chirr of cicadas loose violin strings,
the clouds of uncountable butterfly wings
confuse things. A phrase may contain a mistake.
Aguas means “Watch out!” The water’s your clue.
Mi vida means “Sweetheart” extends to the trees.
Te quierro: I want more than I love you.
Loteria: the poor man’s Monopoly-
cum-Bingo with beans you put back in the jar.
El alma, the soul, rises from an old street
where more than one soul’s disappeared in a bar
beside the new kiosk for tourist police.
El cuerpo: the corps, and the body alone.
Mi cielo: there must be ten more ways to say,
You are Heaven. Amor, he will ask you to stay.
El chiste—the joke—is a necklace of bone.
About the author
For most of Deborah Diemont’s adult life, the word “traveled” and “lived” have coincided, her maximum stay in any location being three years. She has recently settled in Syracuse, New York, after three years living in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico. Her poems have appeared in The Evansville Review, Lucid Rhythms, The Texas Review, and other journals.
Read our current issue, Issue 12 | June 2011:
Poetry
Berlin by Sy Margaret Baldwin
Two Poems by Sean Edgley
After Your Funeral I Set Out to Find You in Different Time Zones by Jennifer Faylor
Painter by Ricky Garni
Other Than by Dana Guthrie Martin
Two poems by Timothy Kercher
Five Views of Guanajuato: A Mythology by Athena Kildegaard
Two poems by Mary Kovaleski Byrnes
Goya by Trent Nutting
The Changing of the Flowers by Jennifer Saunders
Two poems by Ken Turner
Postcard prose
Buttons by Jennifer Faylor
The Enemy Tree by Kirby Wright
Escape on the Canal by Addie Zierman
