George Eklund
Madonna
The Madonna carried in a rickshaw
Her hair braided this time
The bright threads of her thoughts
Severed but soon to lengthen
In the silicon of the sunset,
In the maze of flowers
The seizure of the wind gust.
Yearning for the dewberry and the footstep,
The opening of all time
The brick in the smoke of itself
She fills a necessary uselessness.
Maybe she will change her name
To Agatha or Sophie.
She is coloring with my daughter
An outline of the massacre in yellow
Wiping out the gallery and the grove.
Maybe she will spill her purse
Upon the ragged cobblestone
And smile as children cluster
At the humming insurrection.
George Eklund has published in numerous journals over the past years while teaching on the writing faculty at Morehead State University in eastern Kentucky. He has two book length projects forthcoming in 2017: a translation of Mario Bohorquez’s El deseo postergado (The Delayed Desire) with Valparaiso Ediciones USA, and a bi-lingual volume of his own poems, En los brazos de la niebla (In the Arms of the Fog) due out from Simiente Ediciones, Morales, Mexico.