- For Clarice Lispector and her Hour of the Star
As the author, I alone love you.
If you don’t get a call, it is because I have your phone.
The others are busy calling each other, being each other.
I made them that way, but it is you who wants revenge.
It is you, child, who has a gut.
Take this red lipstick, a sugared cup of coffee, as your own.
See my white hand draw it out for you, flat on your back.
There is no doctor who will work for free, no man.
There is me, love.
I am with you, here, where my lack of heart starts to hurt.
***
I wrote this poem after finishing Clarice Lispector’s final work, “The Hour of the Star.” It is a brief, heart-braking, gently abstract read that captures the desperation that accompanies a fatal illness, of which Lispector was suffering when she wrote the book.
My poem was published by Clamor Magazine, the University of Washington’s lit mag. For some gently abstract reason, I am especially happy to see this piece published.