Lost: A Golden Shovel

after “Splendor Hour” by Kim Addonizio
 
 
 
Am I somewhere in this body?  The “I”

once reprimanding me for indulging lost

men? When you say love, I hear love. You

mean like.

My eardrums damaged from that

way I bend, thumping tongue bruised like a grape

in mouth. Someone can be salvaged. You jawbreaker—

I’m hopeful. Maybe neglect blooms into a kind of missing I’d

repurpose into thirst. Honesty saved,

folded, tucked inside my belly somewhere for

a day when we stop saving me for last.
 
 
 

New Jersey native Ysabel Y. Gonzalez, is also known for her performance poetry under the alias Ancestral Poetisa. She received her BA from Rutgers University, an MFA in Poetry from Drew University and works for the Poetry Program at the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. Ysabel has received invitations to attend VONA, Tin House, Ashbery Home School and BOAAT Press workshops. She is a CantoMundo Fellow, and is also the Program Director for the BOAAT Writing Retreat. Ysabel has been published in Vinyl; It was Written: Poetry Inspired by Hip-Hop; IMANIMAN: Poets Reflect on Transformative & Transgressive Borders Through Gloria Anzaldúa's Work; If You Can Hear This: Poems in Protest of an American Inauguration; Wide Shore, Waxwing Literary Journal, and others. You can read more of her work at www.ysabelgonzalez.com.