Post by thepoetslizard on Oct 10, 2008 15:54:29 GMT 2
Karen Llagas has an M.F.A. from Warren Wilson College, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, Broadsided Press and the anthology Field of Mirrors. Some of her poems received one of the 2007 Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prizes. She lives in San Francisco where she works as a Tagalog interpreter and instructor, and as a poet-teacher with the California Poets in the Schools.
"From a Lighthouse Keeper"
You must know how to navigate the different
kinds of darkness. Not to trust the moon:
though brilliant, she is faithless. You must need
very little sleep, and write long letters. Sometimes,
the Pacific insists on being cadmium.
What derivatives would you take then?
So you play solitaire and sing lullabies with the wind.
You think those buoy lights are a god’s
stubby fingers. Very good. Now become
something other than fallible. Accept that waving
the lost home is, at the moment, best done without men.
We find the mirrors able to concentrate better without
being gazed at, and the kerosene, left on its own,
will sweeten and effloresce. You must know
how to navigate the different kinds of darkness.
*
"Archipelago Dust"
"Open"
"Manananggal"
from the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Memorial fund for poetry website
(Prizes in Poetry)
dorothysargentrosenbergmemorialfund.org/2007awards.htm#kllagas
