Oscillations: Cowgirl & Paper Boats.
Gugliel-Moni, Linda Maria Rodriguez
Oscillations: Cowgirl & Paper Boats
Oscillation A: Cowgirl
My horse,
Not a flesh & bones horse,
Just metal & plastic, bright yellow & blue.
A horse with a western saddle & leather straps,
Straps falling, falling from a bar bit, swinging back & forth,
And I hang on, my small fingers gripping, gripping tight & I
gallop.
Every morning I put on my red stitched shirt, jeans & boots,
And I go out back to ride him, ride him hard.
I am a cowgirl ... & he is beautiful.
My horse stays by my grandfather's sleepy hamaca.
Los primos ride him too, digging into him, forgetting him,
Forgetting him under the sun & rain & sticky summer mangoes.
One day he is bare, darkened bones, squeaking back & forth.
The mango tree has been cut, mi abuelo Vidal too,
Still I grip your brown mane.
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
