Guidebooks for the Dead
Mother’s crimson leather bags
Crammed with saint cards
And tiny glass bottles of liquor.
The bright stitch
Of God’s final coming.
Dirt and dregs, silt and stars.
The sweet song
Of poverty
Rinsing through me
Like the memory
Of a dream.
Credit
Copyright © 2015 by Cynthia Cruz. Used with permission of the author.
About this Poem
“I am currently at work on a new collection of poems ‘on’ or ‘around’ ruins—which, in my mind, is a photograph of the end; of junk and rubble, of us with our things. In this ‘snapshot’ is my mother, while she was still in Germany, still a dancer, before she became a woman in exile.”
—Cynthia Cruz
Author
Cynthia Cruz
Cynthia Cruz is the author of How the End Begins (Four Way Books, 2016) and Wunderkammer (Four Way Books, 2014).
Date Published
03/05/2015