Wednesday, January 20, 2016

JESSICA M. WILSON CARDENAS


Down in the Belly

welcome to the birth of a nation
where people deliver themselves upon their death to the air and the atom
twin mingling of universal deduction.

welcome them to the Harlems and havocs, and nations free temples
that create life's never-ending rat hole statuses where we all sit in line
after line, and wait, in line.

where we find each other in the shadow of a broken brick,
and sift the edges for quarters. this is your people,
hand in hand, in song,
union to keep from being swallowed.
the father’s throat is wider than the mother’s.
the net has been thrown and we are holding still.
holding without gloves or sand, and sweat still protruding, watching us
slip slip slip until we are down in the belly.
a cavern of saints and saintly trotters, whose causes are held
captive in the imagination, past the tongues of deliverance.
behold the capital belly,
unnourishing and never full.


                        ---Jessica M. Wilson Cardenas




Jessica M. Wilson is a poet from East LA. Founder of the Los Angeles Poet Society, a curator of literary goodness. SeriousLonging, her book of poetry, is available from Swan World Press in Paris, France.

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