The Ring
I am learning to speak, again.
Astral, spectral, half-in-dream.
I make my way through the jig-
saw of a cruel and perfect grammar.
Or, just barely. And I have stopped
making work that can’t disappear.
But the music is too much for me. I can take it
but only in minute and fixed increments.
Baby food in a spoon, measured in bite-fulls,
or a capsule I swallow only in daylight,
mid-day after classes. I take it, a sweet
obscene ointment, cosmetic, or
medicine. The most nourishing.
delicate gold capsule of infinite
emollient and sorrow, I swallow
the power and it enters me.
Like ink spilling, or voracious,
an appetite, and all-consuming.
A memory or a snapshot, its flash-light,
illuminating, it takes me, and then
it erases everything.
Cynthia Cruz
