Poetry Thursday

No secret that I adore Sandra Cisneros. Here's one of my favorites from "Loose Woman," a collection of her poetry. It was a close call between this poem and these: "You Bring Out the Mexican in Me" and "I Am So Depressed I Feel Like Jumping in the River Behind My House but Won't Because I'm Thirty-Eight and Not Eighteen." If you haven't read Cisneros' work, I urge you to give it to a try because that chick is a boxer with words and she will kick your ass with her talent.

For more poetry, visit Liz at Be Present, Be Here and click on the links.


The Heart Rounds Up The Usual Suspects
by Sandra Cisneros

I sleep with the cat
when no one will have me.
When I can't give it away
for love or money--

I telephone the ones
who used to love me.
Or try to lure the leery
into my pretty web.

I'm looney as a June bride.
Cold as a bruja's tit.
A pathetic bitch.
In short, an ordinairy woman.
Grateful to excessiveness.

At the slightest tug of generousness,
I stick to the cyclop who takes me,
lets me pee on the carpet
and keeps me fed.

Have you seen this woman?
I am considered harmless.
Armed and dangerous.
But only to me.