Birthday Blue

I cling to sleep through night, through day;
the sanctions grow stricter when I wake.

I walk tenderly, bitter I let him capture me,
handcuff my words with fabric trees.

Oh, how I long for him who lets me
weave theories and dream!

If magic existed, I would drink strength
from it as if it were a fountain.

Copyright Xiomara A. Maldonado 2009

Origami

She writes on slips of paper
to fold into time or timelessness,
and, upon the weighted shadows
of old London Planes, she wishes
she had seen the bombed trains
of the seventies, the mad collage
of crude art maturing into style.

Boldly she steps behind the barricade
and down the shale stairs crumbling
by the River's Side. Pressed against
the gate, her camera captures
multicolored subway walls,
painted tags and spray cans.

If only she could crawl beyond,
go the way those sans abri go,
to touch the block and bubble letters...

She snap snap snaps the shutter;
and when she turns, she folds
her words, stacks them
in her dark space.

Copyright © Xiomara A. Maldonado 2009

All images in this post are Xiomara A. Maldonado's original photographs of Riverside Park in New York City. All of these images are copyrighted and watermarked. If you are going to utilize any of these photographs, please credit the artist as follows: "Photo courtesy of Xiomara A. Maldonado. Copyright Xiomara A. Maldonado 2008;" and create a hyperlink to this blog post. Please email me with a link to where my work is used. I would love to see what you do with it.

*edit - the version of the poem below is recently revised:

She writes on slips of paper
to fold into time or timelessness.

Upon weighted shadows of old London Planes,

she wishes she had seen the 70s— bombed trains,

mad collage— crude art maturing into style.

Boldly she steps: behind the barricade;
down shifting shale stairs
crumbling by the River's Side.

Pressed against the gate, her camera
captures multicolored subway walls,
painted tags and spray cans.

If only she could crawl beyond,
go the way those sans abri go,
to touch the block and bubble letters...

She snap snap snaps the shutter;
and when she turns, she folds
her words, stacks them

in her dark space.

Copyright © Xiomara A. Maldonado

Morningside Heights

Morningside Heights



A shirtless ode sweats hot verse, pulses words,
wrings them like lime, into this open mouth.



A silver hymn, beaded with prayers, hangs
like its Christ from the rearview mirror.



Past Riverside a saline epic shifts, cradling blue
crabs and bass, propelling sewage and plankton.



Crying over the baseball field, newborn graffiti
poetically claims cliffed Manhattan schist.



On one-tenth the root of a Siberian carpe diem
tips my toes and carries cobblestone;



and London haiku, green from eating pollution,
peel brown bark to bare white within.



A stunted doggerel breaks bricks on College
Walk, tricks and trips, sucks in stilettos.



A fossilized elegy, each tentacle a series
of circles, ages in the limestone wall.

Copyright ©Xiomara A. Maldonado 2008

Karintha

Photo © Xiomara A. Maldonado 2009

Karintha

If love takes the body as its book,
What does this living corpse mean to me
When he inscribes into brown breasts, “Look,
Here’s Inherent Rapability!”?

He sees solely what he wants to read—
An Eden, an Eve, and loving trees
Open to his writing serpentine
Seduction upon our still blank leaves.

He condemns us to wear masks of verse—
Faces created in fantasies
Of housewives, whores, and Miss Universe,
Who parade across his stage unfree,

Then stop, stand upon the auction block,
Knowing it is not enough to think
Of Jacobs’ defying locks.
Like her,

We can rewrite our stories,
Seize our bodies’ natural poetry
From his claims of Manifest Destiny.

© Xiomara A. Maldonado 2009

Calliope

Image Copyright © Jonathon Earl Bowser.
http://www.anitra.net/kalliope/images/j006l.jpg

Calliope

About her face she curls her words
A golden crown of woven voice
Every moment her very touch
Carves my tablet with her verse

Sister of artistic spirits
To my knees I drop:
I long to be her muse
As she is mine...

Goddesses who frolic in story
Together we are
Patriots of our own sacred nation
An epic in the making

Copyright Xiomara A. Maldonado 2009