from The Somnambulist
This week in the PEN Poetry Series, PEN America features an excerpt from a poem by Lara Mimosa Montes.
from The Somnambulist
once I paid a sum so handsome
on my face it shone the next day
courtesy of a man whose missing
tooth told me he was thirty-six
ah to be in sync with one’s script ah
to be the author rather than the sordid
stiff actress I touch the swollen skin
left of my right eye I ask Is this grace
is it violence is it black inside like inside
a black plum neither black nor red-violet
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