IRIS MIRANDA

Cedar Pot

Today is a cool rainy day in the tropics… invites one to linger, gloat and drink hot chocolate with potato cheese - my grandmother's recipe. There is little blue in the sky, because of the clouds; and here I see myself comparing its blue-gray background with that of my computer. I feel like thinking that both are an extension intertwined by the needle of my hands… I weave the dream of a dying child in a desert of selfishness… I think about how from the water I move to its hollowness, to his thirst for understanding, to present to you a desert that flows between my soul and his body… Here is my hope, that everyone's gaze thirsts never for nothingness.

Madrigal (Song) Of The Enemy Mothers

And He created the most beautiful look
and made it eternal dew

transparent like the light of dawn...

and Sarah, in captivity of pupils
in Ahmad's eyes,
forgets her pain;

and Esther raises her face
to the cries of her newborn Abir:

Sweet is the calm in the light of love.

He said: Be the most beautiful sight
under the light of dawn
and placed it eternal on their foreheads:

mother's eyes
in the eyes of the son.

Desert Optics

The view aspires and confuses
the glass with water.
The cobra swirls and writhes
under the uninhibited floating blows
that scratch her, caress her.

This desire for rain is more crystal
if sunk in your open sky.
Dune is your hermaphrodite body
intricate, sensory, lighthouse.
They are lives on the run
in the cloud that reaches my eyelash dusted with attempts.
It is so easy to hate everything and nothing,
of the scorpion and the rodent…
It is the song, the desert.

Ahmad watches through the burning smoke
their parents who exploit
after
the explosion.

Ruins in motion.
The stars always twinkle hope
behind death.

They say that the last thing seen by the soldier,
was the little drop of courage in his little face.

They say that the last thing seen by the child,
was his tormented compassion.

Some bloody pieces of the soldier
                remained recognizable;

of the child, only this memory
scattered
in salt crystals.

War binocular
-My son sees me die... 
may my child live long, God, protect him!

-My son has died…
my heart is blind lightning
of his destroyed image!

IRIS MIRANDA (1961, Puerto Rican), is a poet and Spanish Literature Professor at the Universidad Politécnica de Puerto Rico. Published writer: Noches de luna (2007); Alcoba roja (2011) which includes short stories; Óptica del desierto (2013), about Gaza; Flor de Luna Moonflower (2014), poetry for children; Velos de la memoria (2019); and Tacitas de café (2020). Her literary works have been recognized in literary competitions and published in local as well as in international magazines and anthologies. As cultural promotor she has been part of the Festival Internacional de Poesía en Puerto Rico Director´s Board and coordinated many cultural activities such as Certamen Literario UPPR.