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Poem-a-day

Wheel of Fortune

translated from the Galego/Spanish by Samantha Schnee

There are women who, upon the bright star 
of each twenty-eighth day,
receive a stream of liquidity in their accounts, 
endometrial or financial,
a blessed
            hemorrhage of cash.

I, on the other hand, have
a costly hypothesis:
each menstrual cycle is one of pointless nostalgia—
a broken necklace of infinitesimal un-births
not this one, or this one, or this other one, or that one …
all those cells waiting just to rush
headlong into dying so easily, 
my embryonic failures, I 
build a nest to curl up close with them
I’m left alone and, softly, I whisper to my ovaries:
Couldn’t you               
                       produce
                                  something more useful?

I swallow a pill
and make haste to desecrate myself.

 


 

A Roda Da Fortuna

 

Hai mulleres que, co luceiro de cada día vinte oito,
báixalles un caudal de liquidez ás súas contas,
endometrio ou salario,
unha bendita
                     hemorraxia de billetes.

A min, porén, píngame
unha gravosa hipótese
—cada ciclo menstrual é unha inútil nostalxia—
ábreseme un colar de diminutos abortos
este non, este tampouco, nin este outro, nin este ...
todos eses xermes facendo quenda para precipitarse
intentando morrer e non lles custa
meus embrionarios fracasos, eu
fago un niño para me recostar con eles
quedo a soas e, en baixiño, besbéllolles aos meus ovarios:
non podedes
                         segregar
                                          algo máis produtivo?

Trago unha pastilla
e corro a abusar de min mesma.

Copyright © 2025 by Yolanda Castaño. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 9, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.

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Yolanda Castaño

Yolanda Castaño
Photo credit: Alberto Pombo
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About Poem-a-Day

Poem-a-Day is the original and only daily digital poetry series featuring over 250 new, previously unpublished poems by today’s talented poets each year. Randall Mann is the Guest Editor of August. Read or listen to a Q&A with Mann about his curatorial process, and learn more about the 2025 Guest Editors. Support Poem-a-Day.  

If you have any questions about Poem-a-Day, visit our Poem-a-Day FAQ.

Previous Poems

Title Author Date
On Time Robin Robertson 04/04/2022
From “The Land” [That was a spring of storms.] Vita Sackville-West 04/03/2022
​​The Aunty Poem (Mi Privilege Es Su Privilege) Mohja Kahf 04/01/2022
We Dream The Dreams Dreaming Us Brian Tierney 03/31/2022
Lion Tina Chang 03/30/2022
Farnaz Farnaz Fatemi 03/29/2022
My Local Dead Mark Wunderlich 03/28/2022
The Spring Has Many Silences Laura Riding Jackson 03/27/2022
At the Spring Dawn Angelina Weld Grimké 03/26/2022
Divorce Song Jameson Fitzpatrick 03/25/2022

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