A season of rain
by Tara Isabel Zambrano
Sometimes I think
this house has eyes.
They glow.
This house is a hand.
Rubs my voice
against the walls.
At night this house
lets the stars in.
They leak as clouds,
knock at the door,
beg for a season
of rain.
Departure/Arrival
There is always a distance to explore, pull islands from the sea.
Masses from nowhere.
Maybe it is time for the moon to collapse into its reflection.
The sun has always been solitary
packing its light everywhere. What is not touched by darkness?
The bulbs underneath the new soil. A Buddha’s statue covered in foliage.
Nature has no favorites. A stampede fertilizes the earth.
Her endless teeth feed on herself. It isn’t living, it isn’t dying.
I crawl back to my body but there is a lump of dirt. A poem scattered,
its words blinking because they do not feel exactly right.
The wind fools around my name. A black hole where lightning is kept.
Life is a spectacle, half remembered. Always winks out from nothing.
the myth of being alive
I’m holed up in a motel following the night
buttoned down all the way to bloodied dawn
wrestling with a fresh roll of USA Times.
Despite the police sirens across the street,
I remain asleep. Needle marks on my arm heal.
Coughs from the next room grow quiet.
The sun eats itself, footsteps outside the door
grow and fade, steam of cheap coffee and
popcorn sink into the semen-rotted carpet.
Some days I walk out of my skin. Red hollow
of an afternoon rivals my crimson eyes.
Empty pizza boxes cover my face.
Car clotted streets gasp for air. On dead ends,
I unfold a gang war. My hair turns gray in light,
my voice at the end of a muzzle, tries to sing.
BIO
Tara Isabel Zambrano moved from India to The United States two decades ago. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Healing Muse, Moon City Review, Bop Dead City, and others. She lives in Texas and is an Electrical Engineer by profession.
