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SUNDAY
–after Angel Gonzalez
Beautiful Sunday,
whose arms open to a thousand butterflies,
who returns memories of joyful carousels
to the minds of old trees
and cools the foreheads of fever, who gathers bag ladies
to sing alongside those dying alone
and loves the bored children in churches.
Mother of sparrows,
who steers the boats,
barely awake, away from eddies,
and keeps the feet of refugees from tiring.
Even if it’s just for one day
that the homes of the poor fill with bread and honey,
even if on Monday the backs of people bend over
while carrying suitcases of debt.
O Jerusalem of days,
even if come Monday we forget
we promised you our right hand, even though we go back
to climbing hills, and move like donkeys
loaded with blankets, we look forward, again,
to your pomegranates and pears, vowing
not just our hands, but whole bodies
filled with a chorus of flowers
ready to harmonize with each of your dawns.
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This poem is from the book The Boat that Brought Sadness into the World, and is available at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/the-boat-that-brought-sadness-into-the-world-by-eva-skrande/
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The poems in The Boat that Brought Sadness into the World address exile both literally and metaphorically. The book addresses the literal exile of the poems’ main speaker as well as the hard migrations of refugees. It discusses how exile might “swallow [one] whole” and the pain of refugees, whom the speaker imagines long to see their homeland once more. Metaphorically, it looks at life as a journey of and to exile. The book explores, for example, the journey from childhood through older ages and suggests that death is the ultimate exile as we leave the country of the body. These poems are incantations that challenge, refuse, and accept loss and longing.
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Eva Skrande is the author of three volumes of poems, including My Mother’s Cuba and Bone Argot along with the chapbook, The Gates of the Somnambulist. Her poems have appeared in Agni, The Iowa Review, Smartish Pace the American Poetry Review, and other journals. She has received fellowships from the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston, the Inprint Foundation, and the Houston Arts Council. She teaches for Writers in the Schools in Houston. She is a faculty tutor at Houston Community College and is a writing coach and founder of Write for Success Tutoring.
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