Three Poems and Spoken Word – Gayle J. Greenlea

Lorca’s Bones

In the hills above Granada and the hollow of the vega,
a guitar weeps, defiant
Its song will not be silenced.

Heat, blood, toil, love
The pony moon remembers olives
tumbling from his pockets as he fell

They’d stalked him in cafés, cemeteries, chapels
Gypsy poet penning provocative verse, Liberty rehearsed
on page and stage, enraging El Claudillo

Cuffed in the sfumato dawn, marched with the doomed
into the belly of the poplar grove. Blood wedding
witnessed by unwilling ghosts: eyes, bullet-gouged from pale stone

Roses splayed on the clay-crowned wall,
fearless hijos harvested too young
Death watches from the towers of Córdoba

Queer flesh ravaged by Falangist claws
Duende sown in a mass grave
How long the road in the company of los desaparecidos?

Some bravely hurl their hearts at horns
La guitarra thrums, defiant
Its song will not be silenced

Elaboration #2 Green-yellow w/spindly branches and flowers. Small geometric cube rectangular small size visual poem.

The Empath Dies in the End

Poem Title(c) David L O Nan

The empath dies in the end
in a field plowed by tanks,
trampled by feet fleeing
The banner of sun dimmed by smoke,
lungs aflame with sulphured air

The grandfather with trembling hands
bends over the stained sheet, singing
the last lullaby
Tiny shoes, empty. A mother’s tears,
generational fears, revived

The dark shadow rises: broken cross
dividing sheep from goats
Flags unfurled from history’s dust,
wound re-opening; malevolent flower
lulling love to sleep. Justice shredded
in a torrent of bullets,
pollinating hearts with hate

Wake!
Wake from the chimeric
enchantment. The seductive
whisper: music of opposites, lure of lies,
the hundred-year sleep of irreality

Monsters point fingers, then guns
The empath bleeds with the innocent
as the rough beast devours
the light. Night rolls back centuries
The fight for humanity commences
again. The empath stands in the breach,
absorbs shock, offers her body as Host,
digs graves, sowing herself in furrows
of earth; seed under stars, under snow,
waiting for sunflowers

Elaboration #3 Burgundy background w/ mauve-red spindly branches in a riot of shapes, like music. w/ small pale red flowers. Horizontal placed rectangular medium size visual poem.

In the Late Hours

In the late hours, gravity pulls hard
Grave things weigh heavy,
rubble in Gaza, piling stone

upon stone on the roots of the tree
packing earth’s suitcase
for travelers who never go home

I listen for the breath of children,
roam dark hallways,
trip over the tree cleaved in two

No one will sit under its shade
Heat blisters skin and bare rock
Streams in the desert rot with raw

sewage. Metallic birds drone
overhead, choir of cicadas. Nothing
here, no sign of life. Ashen figures

shuffle through grit, pause to sift
cinders, clutching bones to their breasts
Pulled through the earth by gravity,

I pace aimlessly, place rocks
on gravestones. Neither brother is free
when they may not lower

nets from their boats side by side
This is how the world ends:
Cain and Abel kneel in orange gowns

Winter scatters snow layer by layer
on the roots of the tree, hiding its branches
packing earth like a suitcase

Elaboration #4 Powder blue background w/white spindly branches and white flowers. Vertical placed rectangular small size visual poem.

LORCA’S BONES – Read by Gayle Greenlea

Gayle J. Greenlea is an activist, political poet and counselor for survivors of sexual and gender-related violence. Her poem, Wonderland”, received the Australian Poetry Prod Award in 2011. She shortlisted and longlisted for the Fish Poetry Prize in 2013, and debuted her first novel, Zero Gravity, at the KGB Literary Bar in Manhattan in 2016. Her work has been published in IceFloe Press, San Antonio Review, Fevers of the Mind, Black Bough Poetry, Stanford University’s Life in Quarantine Project, The Wombwell Rainbow, Kalonopia, Headline Poetry and Press, Rebelle Society, St. Julian Press, A Time to Speak, and The Australian Health Review. Website: https://www.goodtrouble.space/. Twitter: @GJGreenlea. Bluesky: @gjgreenlea.bsky.social.

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