April Poems Day 2

Wasn't expecting this -- the Day 2 assignment is to write a poem where you speak in someone else's voice. Of course, I always speak in someone else's voice, but this was to be a little different.

Put yourself in someone (or something) else's skin and write a poem about the experience. Who (or what) ever you become, please make that the title of the poem.

Someone else. The Communist courier of the first poem? No, obviously the directive was leading me to a different point of view, but I wanted to get farther away than that. The Communist girl is a mysterious figure, and I want to leave her that way...so someone who watches over her. From across another border.


Dolores Ibárruri (La Pasionaria)

I still control
the fervent strategies
the intellect of
young women
when their bodies

become an extension
I am the one who
lets them loose
so their bodies
shimmer from inside out

but holds them on course
true to the
revolution
the directive that they
never lose themselves

give in to
weakness give up
control but in my dreams
such dreams as we have
in this place

I abandon
the borders unguarded
myself to desire
I let them
all cross over



I hadn't realized she lived so long, or died so recently (1989). But I think that works for this character.