DIG
Soledad Asialinda Alfaro-Allah 1998 (United States)
Doom
Settles on her tongue
Dry and thick.
She licks
Swallows
Savors
The acrid bite of ash
Left of her brother's bones.
Her lips
Curl back
In a crooked wince
With coarse drivel
Muddled into clay
Running down the folds of her cheeks.
Abuela has buried us all in her mouth.
Beneath tooth and gum
We rest
She scrapes the crusted mortar from her chin
With her father's chisel,
Corroded and caked in rust
Trying to smooth the crows' feet from her eyes
Quien soy? she weeps into the mirror
Quien soy? she asks the face looking back
Quien es?
"Who is she? This old woman in my house?"
About this poem
I wrote this poem about my grandmother, who is now succumbing to dementia. Her life was tumultuous and in many ways sad. She kept a lot of secrets throughout it, and now that she wants to talk about it she cannot remember things. She is the last of all of her beloved siblings and has dug too many graves.
Written on December 26, 2023
Submitted by Soledad.aa9 on January 10, 2024
- 40 sec read
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Quick analysis:
Scheme | XXX XXX XX XAXBXX XXX XBXX XAX X |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 600 |
Words | 133 |
Stanzas | 8 |
Stanza Lengths | 3, 3, 2, 6, 3, 4, 3, 1 |
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Citation
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"DIG" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 13 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/180185/dig>.
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