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Ceremonial

Delirious,
touch-starved,
I pinch a mole
on my skin, pull it
off, like a bead—
I pinch & pull until
I am holding
a black rosary. Prayer
will not cool
my fever.
Prayer will not
melt my belly fat,
will not thin
my thighs.

A copper-
faced man once
called me beautiful.
Stupid,
stupid man.
I am obese. I am
worthless.
I can still feel
             his thumb—
                          warm,
burled—moving
             in my mouth.
                          His thumbnail
a flake

of sugar
he would not
allow me to swallow.
                          Desperate
for the sting of snow
             on my skin,
                          rosary
tight in my fist,
              I walk into
                          a closet, crawl
into a wedding dress.
Oh Lord,
here I am.

Eduardo C. Corral is the author of Slow Lightning (Yale University Press, 2012), which was chosen by Carl Phillips as the 2011 winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets.

About Eduardo C. Corral

Occasion

Hispanic Heritage Month

Themes

About this Poem

“I’m having a hard time writing poems that surprise and challenge me in the wake of my first book. Most of my drafts read like rehashed older work. I’m waiting for a snippet of language or an image to lead me into new terrain. I know it will happen. I have to be patient. ‘Ceremonial’ is one of the few poems that have escaped my notebooks. It’s a poem that unsettles me. I often wish I’d never written it. The hurt that triggered the language still pulses inside me.”
— Eduardo C. Corral

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In my skull, loneliness opens like a parachute.
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Eduardo C. Corral

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To Francisco X. Alarcón (1954–2016)

You made tomatoes laugh
& warned me
some words die in cages.

I met you first in the desert.

You burned sage, greeted,
each of the four directions
with plumed syllables.

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^{boats used by African emigrants to reach Spanish islands}

A girl asleep beneath a fishing net

Sandals the color of tangerines

Off the coast of Morocco

A moonlit downpour, God's skeleton

Bark, dory, punt, skiff

"Each with a soul full of scents"

Day after day spent shaping

Eduardo C. Corral

2016

Poems

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Ceremonial

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