I’m more in the Faulkner tradition. I’m writing my Spanish in English. Florid, flowing, expansive, rococo sounds, the sonority of Spanish closer to t… - Julia Alvarez

I'm watching a romantic play
in Plato's cave; half the time I don't
believe in it...
Other times I'm so addicted I'm one of the mainliners...
hallucinating that in truth a man's
body is one of the Absolute Forms.
I look around when the houselights come on
and see no one!

I remember the whirr and whine of her black Singer,
the gold traceries on the cast iron rod
by the wheel that lifted and lowered the needle.
Threading, eyepieces, winding the turquoise string
through hooks, around miniscule wheels, up and down,
her hands clever in labyrinths, ...the needle racing through gingham, poplin, seersucker, cambric,
the pedal pressed heavily down with the weight of one woman,
eye intent, hands feeding and receiving the fabric.

Are we all with acute loneliness,
chronic patients trying to recover
the will to love?
...Sometimes the love
of another wounded one acts like a salve
which soothes the dying self but cannot heal
our lives. And perhaps this is what it feels
like to be human, and we are all well?