Join us this Tuesday in continuing our National Poetry Month celebration with a guest poem by Juliana Castillo, a Philosophy major of the class of 2025. Juliana uses imagery of membranes, liquid and light in this fictional “love letter” to a poet who was influential to the narrator.
Dear deceased poet, who lived to
Twenty-five – I miss you, even though you died
Years before I was born; years before today, when
I am already twenty-six. Dear deceased poet, I can
Hear your voice, telling me that life is a membrane
To stretch around the vesicles of water, nutrients, and the other
Vacu-sealed ingredients that enable existence.
They put you away, corked up your bottle of
Fizzing champagne that stretched the boundary between
Toxin and pacemaker,
Hoping the bubbles would
Dampen themselves smashing against the side
Of the bottle. They didn’t understand the mechanics:
That when you keep pressure in a space,
Someday
It emerges, in a paroxysm of joy.
Dear deceased poet, thank you
For teaching me that life is a succession of
Dark things, but that if you polish the darkness,
It reflects light. Perhaps they didn’t want us to
Know about the silver-flecked darkness, the eighteen-carat
Abyss. Or perhaps they didn’t know themselves
And were frightened by the light you saw –
The darkness they saw –
In your eyes. Dear deceased poet,
Did you ever think of me? Did you ever see your midnight
Reflected in the heavens of my unborn eyes?
Dear
Deceased poet, who taught me that life is a shirt stretched
Too tightly over a stomach gorged on faces and emotions and thoughts
And words – a belly pregnant with an excess of vitality –
You exploded into me, detonated your energy into my
Being. Come – swell my mind with your liquid,
Pour metaphors into my veins until my eyes stream with the
Sparkling wine of elation.
Elation at the mere presence of a vesicle, a central vesicle:
Your words, giving me water to respire. Dear deceased
Poet – your words whisper through my fingertips, drumming
Braille into my nerves; they run like water through my throat. Poet,
Deceased, but still dear (though they’ve obscured you in the blinding light)
Never regret writing your explosive words – not revolutionary
But explosive. Even though you never had the
Pop
Of cork from lips,
You had a sparkling shattering of glass on floor –
And now, I lap the stones
To drink in your exuberance.
Did you enjoy this poem from 186 South College’s National Poetry Month series? We are still accepting guest posts from Honors students through April and May. If you would like to share your work to be featured on 186 South College, please submit through this link.
