The Music Next Door

The low, mariachi wails sound
like they did before
I knew what they meant.

(The mourning dove coos, 
the carpool shrieks & airplane
rumbles, the errant
Chihuahua yaps,
the soft buzz of flies on trash—
those are all familiar language). But,

"Pecho...
...esclavo...
...piel..."
The trumpets: 
I almost forgot


xo, Sadie 

I Am Peter Stillman

After the graphic novel adaptation of Paul Auster’s City of Glass

by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli

Peter Stillman shuts his eyes

and speaks to me.

He says that Peter Stillman

is not his real name.

He makes phone calls

in the middle of the night to detectives

and asks them to help him

search for his words

because they get lost

in the feathering

blue threads of dollar bills—

camouflaged in engrossing noise.

They are clouded by the current

of his father’s fists.

Peter Stillman lives in a world

of black and white.

He stares and sleeps and starves himself

for a glimpse of the sun—

the raging light of gold and orange,

brilliant enough

to burn his pale face into color.

Peter Stillman tells me

about his metamorphosis.

He is a dragonfly,

Gregor Samsa,

the organs of leaves.

In the morning, he is born.

He wakes up and grows old

as shadows move from one side of the room to the other

and every night, he dies.

Peter Stillman lets me speak.

I tell him about the hours

that I spend sweating in the dark

and the miles and miles

that I walk the city streets—

the pavements that I wear thin.

I am threadbare.

I divide myself

so that I soon will become nothing,

so that I will forget the faces of my wife and children,

so that their faces will fade into the chasm

of my bare apartment walls.

Peter Stillman shakes his head

and says that I am wrong.
I am lost with his language.

He says that there is hope

even in this bloodless prison.

One day, he says,

when he doesn’t wake up from death,

he may become God.

He will right his wrongs

and mine.

He will ease his pains

and mine

and he will position the sun

to set fire to all our faces.

xo, Rose

Phototaxis

A flytapped against the glass
of the light bulb and it sounded
just like your fingers
strumming a bare wall.

I saw the warped shadow of the fly—
large
across the yellowing screen and
I remember the way
your eyes looked underneath lamps—
the same yellow—
and the way
you nearly rubbed them out.

Now, there is
an opening in your face — hollow parts
in a white skull.

The fly leads the blind
to light—where you both feel it,
and throw yourselves
against the glass
to stay warm,
navigating a straight line toward the sky.


xo, Rose

Something Like Rivers Ran

This is the poem for which we named the blog. Cisneros' skill in evoking the poignant urgency of connection continues to be of unending inspiration.


undid the knot  the ribbons
    the silk flags of motion
unraveled from under

the flesh of the wrists
    the stone of the lungs
something like water

broke free the prayer
     of the heart
the grief of the hands

crooned sweet when
    you held me
dissolved knee into knee

belly into belly
     an alphabet of limbs
ran urgently

nudged loose a pebble
     a pearl
a noose undoing its greed

and we were Buddha
     and we were Jesus
and we were Allah

at once
    a Ganges absolving
language  woman  man

-Sandra Cisneros, from Loose Woman, copyright 1994


xo, Sadie