Vince Gotera's Blog

A Petrarchan sonnet from my poetry collection Fighting Kite . . .


      Wedlock

Papa said, "You know I would have to kill you,"
To Mama, who sat quietly, head bowed.
I was just a kid — five or six — and cried
deep gut-wrenching sobs. The moon, like a new
coin in the window, sliced in half by blue
knives of cloud. "You're too young to understand,
Vin," he smiled. "It would be my duty as a man."
A tear on her cheek, Mama whispered, "That's true."

To this day, I don't know if there was another man
Or if they were only talking possibility,
In case, for example, Mama felt her face
Begin to flush downstairs with a repairman.
Her only safety net then — Papa's motto,
A place for everything, everything in its place.



First appeared in Tilting the Continent: Southeast Asian American Writing,
eds. Shirley Geok-Lin Lim and Cheng Lok Chua



In my non-Goodreads blog, The Man with the Blue Guitar, a post titled "Weddings and Knife Clouds" features this poem.

 

A group of four linked haiku from my poetry collection Ghost Wars . . .


      Gulf War Haiku

A hummingbird slips
                            ruby-neon helmet deep
                     in fuschia blossoms . . .

                                           its hollow beak, black
                                                  as stealth-bomber wings, traces
                                   red calligraphy

                            on dawn's lavender
                     parchment . . . feathers, like fireworks,
                                           bleed sparks in dark air . . .

       all day, hummingbirds
                            glow like ghostly fighter planes
behind my eyelids



First appeared in the journal
War, Literature, and the Arts.

 

A rock & roll terza rima sonnet from my poetry collection Dragonfly . . .


      "Are You Experienced?"

In the Church of Saint Jimi, purples and blues
played in the gold haze of the spotlight.
A glass butterfly slicing through

Spanish forests on ebony nights.
At Monterey, Jimi's hips
had thrust vermillion into white

hot flames. Strumming with lips,
fingers, tongue — Hendrix had spiraled
into our brains, fired the wicks

of our secret candles. We fed on his crystal
bones like vampires at some vile feast.
How could we have known how brittle

he really was? That the prince was just
a mirror? His flesh, only flesh?



First appeared in the
magazine ART/LIFE.