Poetry – Issue 11 | January 2011
Manifest
by Lisa Ortiz
Mornings here, I put my French on: underthings, white blouse, a tight skirt.
I dress letter by letter, I wear my accent comme ci.
To the fleuriste, I am charming
with my child-language-syntax,
the way I knock over with my draped elbows
glass shelves and vases, shatter
imperfect verbs.
Astonishingly, I know the word jonquille;
with azaliée, I get lucky.
Having said my piece, I clutch a madness of daffodils,
a profundity of azaleas. The bouquet rustles
and down the wet stairs, my shoes and skirt
click and swish. On the Metro
everyone is silent.
About the author
Lisa Allen Ortiz has been shot at on the mountains of Peru and held by INTERPOL on suspicion of drug smuggling in Columbia, but all the good times have been in Paris. Her work has appeared on Verse Daily or in the Comstock Review, Crab Creek Review, Zyzzyva and elsewhere. Her chapbook, Turns Out, is forthcoming from Main Street Rag Press (2011).
Read our current issue, Issue 11 | January 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
