To give a taste of what's happening during National Poetry Month in San Antonio, we will be posting poems each week by poets reading at local events.
Cyra S. Dumitru is a poet, swimmer, and faculty member of the English & Communication Studies Department at St. Mary's University. Dumitru and other university teachers and their students will be reading Saturday, March 31 at the Twig Book Shop at 2 p.m.
To the Gunman of Juarez
for my students
By Cyra S. Dumitru
Someone felt joy at your birth,
prayed thankfully to the Virgin,
recorded your entry into blood and water.
I remind myself of this because at the moment
I wish boiling oil bathing your face and hands and feet.
You are blind. Could hot oil restore your sight?
Did blindness begin as a thorn in the daily beans,
as knife edge of heat in a crowded home? Did you
open a book and see words as emptiness?
Many tombstones speak your name.
Do you visit cemeteries and count
your fame carved inside the dates?
I tell you:
The world does not turn in your violence.
The young women, whose people you killed,
will outlive you. They see with eyes so deep
that you would fall for days
inside one glance from them.
They breathe webs with luminous
strands that encircle this grieving land.
You will see that dignity rises from dust,
living as it does deeper than fear.
It snags you, a giant web encasing,
all the terrible deeds you have yet to do.
Free; 2pm Saturday, March 31, University Teachers & Students reading at The Twig Book Shop, 200 E Grayson, (210) 826-6411, thetwig.com. To see a calendar of all National Poetry Month events in San Antonio, go to npmsa2012.com.
