Accents
I speak with all the accents
of the people I have loved-
the warriors and the panicked,
the native and the exiled,
the lovers
of wisdom and of ignorance,
the speakers and the listeners,
those who bleed blue from wounds
and those who by endless night and saber
slaughter the rest like sheep,
those who have returned love
and those who left me upon its shore.
I am still coming of age
in their contradictions
and I find nothing of death
lumped in my one throat,
that never forgets
its thousand dead dialects.
-published in Tertulia Magazine
