DAME LA VERDAD: STIGMATA POETICS

"the duende wounds"
--Lorca

I long hid with uncut hair and wounds as eyes, waiting for You.
--from "Sentences"

Belatedly, I thank those who engaged with moi Flamenco chap -- thanks Jean! And Jean follows up her engagement with her response to Moi's call of "Dame La Verdad"! Lorca split a stigmata on Jean's hand -- no wonder she turned to poetry!

Poetry does that sometimes, yah? When I was writing about my father dying, I woke up with teeny crosses in the middle of my palms...

Ernesto also got his copy and responds in part: "...a true work of art, a happening of a poetry collection, an interruption of the course of everyday life, a shattering in time and space, un cancionero bilingüe, a work of love, a work of drunkenness (of course, it was only a question of time before oenophile Tabios would fall prey to the lunatic spell of Lorca, duende and flamenco)."

Thanks Ernesto. But if Moi also is to abide by La Verdad, I should note that a long time ago in New York City, I did study flamenco. From day one -- from that very first poem -- duende blackened my hands...

But I was so inept I turned what I learned about flamenco's sinuous twining of hands into a bastardized Kali martial arts movement (when one of my plays was presented during Small Press Traffic's Poets' Theatre). But at least my body was engaged in the poem, no matter how ineptly. I think my poems are good at also featuring ... bodily awkwardness.

But I loved my black flamenco skirt -- its radiant sheen...

...I loved the radiance -- from day one of the first poem, duende blackened my hands. But I could never consider duende's demands -- and they have been destructive ("do violence to your body or give way to the beauty of dawn"--Catherine Clement, Syncope: The Philosophy of Rapture) to be acts of sacrifice. You get out of poetry what you put into it.

Actually, I haven't gotten from Poetry what I put into it. I've gotten more. And let me share my secret on that ROI. It's a choice. In addition to choosing to suffer for your art, you can choose to ... receive a lot.

Stigmata? Eh, Poetry -- bring it on. My hands are lifted, my palms open. Sing, Body. Sing until You dance. Dance so furiously you notice the bruises only for admiring their violet blossoms. Sing, You Body. Dance.

You don't just sing the Poetic Song. Your body must get in the way of the abstract Word. Dance that poem into Song:

I am leaking, I am leaking, help me, I am leaking on to the floor or your shoes ... go ahead lick it up and taste the dissolved gains of sugar
--kari edwards