Carmen Giménez Smith Poems

Hit Title Date Added
1.
Happy Trigger

Off-season and in
the burnt forest
of my nightgown, a feral
...

2.
Beasts

My siblings and I archive the blanks in my mother's memory,
diagnose her in text messages. And so it begins, I write although

her disease had no true beginning, only a gradual peeling away
...

3.
Photo of a Girl on a Beach

Once when I was harmless
and didn't know any better,
...

4.
Only a Shadow

My daughter gathers the seeds she finds in our desert, calls them
spirits — the spirits are us, she says when I worry those orbs in my fingers
...

5.
Déjà Vu

It happened to me once.
Winter came, and snow quilted every inch.
I stood on the soapbox, as I was told,
...

6.
Decoy Gang War Victim

Just a tick ago, the actor was a Roman candle
shot to the sky, smudged by rain's helter-
skelter. His motivation was: he's a stooge
...

7.
The Daughter

We said she was a negative image of me because of her lightness.
She's light and also passage, the glory in my cortex.
Daughter, where did you get all that goddess?
...

8.
Bleeding Heart

My heart is bleeding. It bleeds upward and fills
my mouth up with salt. It bleeds because of a city in ruins,
the chair still warm from sister's body,
...

9.
Default Message

I have thirty seconds to convince you
that when I'm not home, my verve is still,
online or if I'm sleeping when you call,
...

10.
Redaction

We make dogma out of letter writing: the apocryphal story
of Lincoln who wrote angry letters he never sent. We wait for letters
for days and days. Someone tells me I'll write you a letter
...

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