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Poetry
Writing
poetry was the first type of creative writing that Cristina
ever engaged in. Her early poems were the
content of homemade birthday and anniversary cards for
family and friends.
Later,
she found her true poetic voice in college, sharing her verse for the
first time in 1997 at a live, on-air broadcast of WXPN’s “Live from the
Writer’s House” hosted on the campus of the University of
Pennsylvania. It was the audience’s enthusiastic reaction to
those three poems that exhilarated her and made her want to continue to
write poetry.
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I Found It!
The University of Pennsylvania's Writer's House
maintains an audio file archive where I tracked down
a recording of my first ever public poetry reading. Click
here to
listen to "Readymade" - written and performed the 22nd of
March 1997. |
Experimental and geared to the spoken voice, below Cristina shares some of her
recently published poetry. Enjoy!
Autumn Offering
Scanning the tree tops from the
forest floor,
She catches the color of wine
That stains her lips and tongue,
Teeth and gums,
And sings through her veins
To take her higher.
The leaves were
A melancholy kind of burgundy,
The sad shade of red
That stares up from a wineglass
And wants to get drunk.
She sips shaded wine
In their company,
Sitting beneath their canopies
Stemmed cup in hand,
Star-gazing,
Her tongue blazing behind stained lips.
Her wine shimmers like blood,
A routine blood,
A familiar blood,
That bonds them.
With tainted tongue,
She speaks of spreading roots and sprouting life
And hears a murmur of recognition.
Huddled close she runs fingers deep into the grooves
Drawing the heated sap from its source.
Like hers,
A sticky remembrance of
Bleeding that does not mean death.
Like a soft, suckled flower
Held close
By wine,
And blood,
And branches,
She’s lifted up,
Held high,
Shown the stars,
The nests
Where she rests a drowsy head
Spilling wine down below
Where new trees grow
Of wine and blood and claret leaves,
Deep red like the sun warming up,
Coming up,
And telling the night,
The stars
And the women to go home.
Dawn finds a wine bottle amidst the trees,
Broken glass within the roots,
And merlot lingering,
Glittering
On the tree’s trunk
Slowly,
Surely
Seeping in.
Copyright 2010
Cristina T. Lopez-O'Keeffe
History of Lviv
Tell me about this land
Not lost but seemingly forgotten again and again as
The sun only shines on the pretty places.
The back of buildings exposed for what they are.
Historical becomes a euphemism for “crumbling”
And these special places
Surrounding,
Astounding in faded glory,
Cover me with their fine powder,
The settling of ancient bricks ready to give.
Tell me about this land,
Not yours, but conquered again and again
By a million
Roving hands and artisans and captors and killers
And all the rest that make a place interesting.
It’s all here,
The tales told and retold in the faded facades of the old
places.
It’s all here,
The tales retold in the faded facades of the old faces.
Here they circle around me,
Filling me with tea
And coffee
And dumplings stuffed with curds
And words filled with meaning that are hard to understand.
The people are historical,
Holding memories they trace in their footsteps,
Their shuffle, as they walk down the old streets,
Just barely making it,
Just barely taking it,
Just barely able to stand on their feet.
They give and give and give.
And then give way.
That is the history of Lviv
Until today.
Copyright 2010 Cristina
T. Lopez-O'Keeffe
Footprints
You echo.
On a line far off you echo
About this thing you have
That you don’t want to have
And you’re crying with it.
You’re whispering
About sleep that drowns out the loneliness,
A peace that takes out the heartlessness.
When I heard you say it
I thought I could do something
Because mine is yours
Since the day we cried into cocoa
And I called you friend.
I’ve recalled the many walks I took
That scarcely brought me home.
You are not the only one
Who’s considered desperate action.
Where are you going?
What do you take with you?
What burdens do you carry
That I cannot bear,
Cannot take?
The line is silent because there is no answer.
Your voice is quiet because you are already committed to
going alone.
So I bow down to you --
No saints, no sinners, no judge.
No one here but me and you
And an ocean of pain between us
That I cannot remove, but witness
And hope one day you’ll read these words
to know you never went alone
I just followed your footsteps
So I could bring you home.
Copyright 2010 Cristina
T. Lopez-O'Keeffe
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