Millicent Borges Accardi
(Portugal-USA)
The Maiden with the Rose on her Forehead
Based on a Portuguese fairy tale
This is the arrangement.
You are alone in the careful
Boxed garden, inside
A brick city of no arrival.
The air drums up like skin
Stinging with a golden
Promise. Then there is this wind
And the roses, feel their steadiness.
There is a muscular wind
That lifts your skirts about
Your face, like night into day,
The cloth rustling and pulling
Is a prince going to war.
Guided by your tension,
You want so much to be inside
This stretch of time, this battle
To hold yourself down. The cloth
Brushes your neck and such,
And the struggle burns like a lingering,
Burns upon your forehead.
I Adore the Field
(based on a blog entry by Jacinto Lucas Pires)
Many times I, by hand,
Over hand, imagine shades
Of the finished trees
Wrapped up for the soul
Both black and white
Stepping over plants
With their spotted-rooted feet
as if they were Helen of Troy.
Oh, how many times not
Did I desire a garden of where
To plant steel and other hard verses
of the sky filled with an immensely blue
Size that we only can have
When we are far from the city.
And also I see, in the paintings
of António Palolo. Oh, the space.
The holes in the landscape,
Bare places-palcos, where we can
Sing. To dance, to speak when the world
Stops masking the face of modernistas,
Stops glorifying saints, their rags,
Clothes or threads, futuristas, no,
Not that, I adore the field.
Dishtowel
Originally appeared in Verdad: vol. 11
Clean like Spain.
First now
A city, soiled, no
Water enough to keep
For a whole resistance
To war.
How could mind-reaching
Exist with a long walk
To ruins, castles
A family dries dishes
Together, stops, pauses
Hidden to inhabit
Flowers of bumble bees
To mark up UNESCO city
Castles charm, menial
Tasks
Women’s work this drying
Going through the wall of language.
Dishtowel, I ask you to stand
Like Spanish, like Czech like Russian,
So soft and pliable meant
For ordinary
Dishes dried in any language
This cloth I
So soft and pliable meant for. . .
I came here because it reminded
Me of you, more, I bought this
Because it reminded me.
Being careful never helped
Anyone grow.
Too many words
The best I can do
Time I remember in ordinary
Objects. My mind works outside
Myself. It’s rough and more adaptable
Than the soul
Of just objects. I hear
The words so fine and delicate
So forgiving the soul
Of an object. Life lifted
Dish by dish by water
What can a kitchen tell?
This Requires However
If he loved me forever, sin
Then his mouth would turn
Into a moon, sin
If angels fit on the head
Of a homeless man, sin, the elbow
Would slip against her throat, sin.
Los pueblos, los niños
Embargo profundamente
Find the road of your generation, sin
Too much, but none the less
There is a reason for the calendars.
Sin, it seems forever we will all sit and
The rays will touch only
The song.
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Millicent Borges Accardi, a Portuguese-American writer has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, CantoMundo, Fulbright, the Corporation of Yaddo, and California Arts Council. Her most recent book is Only More So (Salmon Poetry, Ireland). Find her @TopangaHippie
New Poetry Collection: Only More So @ Amazon