by Paula Rodriguez
A yellow goldfinch is perched atop the wall that was damaged by the last earthquake. Its minute weight adds to the leaning. It is agitated today. It seems to be making little diving cabrioles to hunt grain from the dried vegetation in the park beneath the cinder block wall. Who knows how many miles it had to travel to reach his newly found plenty.
On the crisp dawn of a morning in July, I lift my suitcase with the others, and fly west with the goldfinches, bedazzled by the eldorado of the glittering skyline. Having crossed a river of gold that was kissed by the sun, I burn my ships and stay for a lifetime.
I see my sister, whom I left behind, and all the faces behind her, mourning the falling rain from her window in the lighthouse. Confronted by the lies in the mirror, she chases dreams that fade in the tails of the rainbow.
Paula M. Rodriguez is an educator in greater Los Angeles. She started her literary career in Spain, where she won first award on the prestigious poetry prize Francisco Nieva, but focused thereafter on academic publications that deal with different aspects of the literary experience, from Shakespeare to Henry James. Her first poem published in the United States appeared in 2006 in The Blind Man’s Rainbow, under the title “Other Words for Absence.” Since then, she has earned prizes in the Urban Ocean poetry contest, she has published her work in two anthologies, her poems have been published by Scintilla Press and Humble Pie Literary Magazine, and her novella “Angelus” has appeared in The Write Launch.
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