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Volume 73, Number 1 · Fall 2023

I asked about desire

Dorsía Smith Silva

I asked about desire

 

In this version of my dream, my father quizzes me

with flashcards: What is cytokinesis? What are the stages of mitosis?

 

I know all the answers, until his animals

sprint from the medicine cabinet:

 

hallux tearing my temples,

vibrissa smashing my neck.

 

My mother doesn’t know what time it is.

She turns over and tugs on her eye mask.

 

Who will save me?

My sister is playing a mean game of jacks.

 

My sister is pretending father

is the kind man from the store—

 

the one that gives her a toy

from the discount rack.

 

There is no one to save me.

I’m free to pretend this is an earthquake drill.

 

Huddle across metaled sarcophagus.

Please look away—

 

many-footed canidae are coming

to roister by the carcass                         out of habit.

Dorsía Smith Silva is a poetry editor of is the author of In Inheritance of Drowning (CavanKerry, 2024), poetry editor of The Hopper, and Professor of English at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. She is also the editor of Latina/Chicana Mothering, and the coeditor of seven books. She has received support from Bread Loaf and the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, and she has a Ph.D. in Caribbean Literature and Language. She is a member of the Get the Word Out Poetry Cohort of Poets & Writers in 2024, and she is thrilled that In Inheritance of Drowning is on the booklist of poetry books to read for fall 2024 by Publishers Weekly. Contact her @DSmithSilva.