Oscillation B: Paper Boats.

Gugliel-Moni, Linda Maria Rodriguez

Oscillation B: Paper Boats

 Mi abuela,
 La nona makes them for me,
 But I must wait, for every drop is heavy & cold.

 "Nona, let's make them now, the sun is shining."
 "Las brujas ... the witches are finishing their bath in the light,"
 She says & picks up some newspapers from the table in the balcony.

 I ask if we can open the gate, move our game out front,
 Away from the taunting lengua de vaca & cara de caballo,
 Their smooth leaves, their jaded spark.

 I want to dare the Amazon, the rush in the gutter,
 And as I let them free, they tumble & crash into pebbles,
 They drown next to the seeds falling, falling from the flamboyant.

 My grandmother Isabel takes out her broom & sweeps,
 She sweeps down the hill the brittle seeds,
 She sweeps my broken boats.

16:34:06 central mountain time

7/ 17/ 06

banff international research station, alberta, canada

Linda Maria Rodriguez Gugliel-Moni was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and has lived in England, Washington, D.C., Michigan, and California. She studied at Georgetown, Dijon, Oxford, and the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. Her visual poetry collection, Metropolitan Fantasies--textos errantes, was published in 2001. She edited Enlaces: Transnacionalidad--El Caribe y su Diaspora--(2000), proceedings of the Seventh International Conference of Caribbean Women Writers and Scholars, a project she directed and for which she received an NEH. Her work has appeared in From Totems to Hip-Hop, The Caribbean Writer, Sargasso, Mango Season, MaComere, and Thamyris. In 2002 she was awarded an Associate Artist position at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, where she worked with Ishmael Reed, and in 2004 completed a Residence with Elmaz Abinader at the Voices of Nations Arts Foundation. Her short story, "The Galician," was the 2006 winner of The Raymond Carver Best Story Award by a Non-North American Author and also was awarded third prize by the Society for the Study of the Short Story at the 9th