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Literature Text
Don Emilio calls on us each week. My sisters
watch him like hungry cats: Juanita,
so thin she pokes holes in the sheets,
sour-lipped Pilar, and poor Ines
with her crooked back. But it is to me
his black eyes most often wander.
Mama serves him coffee,
and tightly rolled flautas. Our guest picks
at the food, boasts of his villa
in Guanajuato; immaculate hands dip
and hover like jewelled birds.
I have begun to suspect
that Don Emilio is not looking for a wife.
.
watch him like hungry cats: Juanita,
so thin she pokes holes in the sheets,
sour-lipped Pilar, and poor Ines
with her crooked back. But it is to me
his black eyes most often wander.
Mama serves him coffee,
and tightly rolled flautas. Our guest picks
at the food, boasts of his villa
in Guanajuato; immaculate hands dip
and hover like jewelled birds.
I have begun to suspect
that Don Emilio is not looking for a wife.
.
Suggested Collections
Published in Mimesis Poetry Journal, Issue #2
© 2006 - 2024 salshep
Comments29
I came across this poem on ^PoeticWar's page, and wanting to signal my appreciation, hunted it down here in your gallery.
Why do I like it? - the economy of language for a start. With a few brief lines you quite vividly sketch setting, character and dramatic tension.
In my mind's eye, I have a clear, almost cinematic image of the scene - of angularity and contrast, like a set where sharp shadows cut across white adobe walls, hinting at stillness in midday heat.
Somebody commented above they could make no sense of your line-breaks; I found them, and this may be purely subjective, to be like held breaths, fitting for the mood, adding to the tension.
Is it deliberate? - I feel you have de-humanised the sisters, likening them to hungry cats and giving them an animal-like, single-minded intentness. This effectively highlights and isolates the dynamic between narrator and Don Emilio.
Just a word on his black eyes : that they 'wander'
towards the narrator makes me feel his gaze to be less deliberate, less calculated.
If I was asked (presumptuous tightwhitepants!) I would suggest 'stray' as an alternative word, having as it does a sense of a more consciously chosen act, and added to that both its immoral connotations and its echo of the feline theme.
Personally, I didn't get the idea of Dom Emilio as a pederast, nor of the narrator or sisters as children. I felt Dom Emilio to be fastidious, and supercilious in equal measure, picking over this family, as he picks over the food, simply for his own perverse and recherché pleasure. Such are the subtleties and possibilities you weave into this deceptively simple poem.
Why do I like it? - the economy of language for a start. With a few brief lines you quite vividly sketch setting, character and dramatic tension.
In my mind's eye, I have a clear, almost cinematic image of the scene - of angularity and contrast, like a set where sharp shadows cut across white adobe walls, hinting at stillness in midday heat.
Somebody commented above they could make no sense of your line-breaks; I found them, and this may be purely subjective, to be like held breaths, fitting for the mood, adding to the tension.
Is it deliberate? - I feel you have de-humanised the sisters, likening them to hungry cats and giving them an animal-like, single-minded intentness. This effectively highlights and isolates the dynamic between narrator and Don Emilio.
Just a word on his black eyes : that they 'wander'
towards the narrator makes me feel his gaze to be less deliberate, less calculated.
If I was asked (presumptuous tightwhitepants!) I would suggest 'stray' as an alternative word, having as it does a sense of a more consciously chosen act, and added to that both its immoral connotations and its echo of the feline theme.
Personally, I didn't get the idea of Dom Emilio as a pederast, nor of the narrator or sisters as children. I felt Dom Emilio to be fastidious, and supercilious in equal measure, picking over this family, as he picks over the food, simply for his own perverse and recherché pleasure. Such are the subtleties and possibilities you weave into this deceptively simple poem.
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