the oleanders in your courtyard where they burn candles for you falling yellow light leaves out subject and object to trust that last breath wings out something more than air
Federico García Lorca, “Ballad of One Doomed to Die,” in Gypsy Ballads [Romancero gitano], translated by Langston Hughes, The Beloit Poetry Journal, 1951, chapbook no. 1
Ishmael Reed, “Pocadonia,” in A Secretary to the Spirits (NOK, 1978)
Karla Kelsey, “Fragile Ladder Barques,” section 10.3, in Iteration Nets (Ahsahta Press, 2011)
Carlos Drummond de Andrade, “Looking for Poetry,” translated by Mark Strand, in Travelling in the Family: Selected Poems, edited by Thomas Colchie and Mark Strand (Random House, 1986)
Mark Doty, “Theory of the Soul,” in Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems (Harper Perennial, 2009)
Beautiful cento! The lines are gorgeous, as is how you sequence them.
I have much to learn from you, XP. Lovely.