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River
by Judith Terzi

Is there a word for running out of a poetry
reading having just heard the feature read
a poem you could swear on your mother's grave,
on a stack of Bibles or rhyming dictionaries,
was your poem, or part of your poem which
became all of her poem, fragmented with Spanish
light and violets and valor and a river running
right through it, a river most have never heard of,
but she pronounced it, and maybe she knew
the river was famous for its trucha‐trout‐
or that the río ran alongside vineyards
whose wine could be swirling in Waterford goblets
on our tables at this very moment‐a carménère,
sauvignon blanc, cabernet-merlot‐a river
near a brick hacienda with no electricity, no
running water once, near the Panamericana now,
a casino, a mall; a river unrestrained by language
that will stretch just so much and no farther;
how there are some holes it will not cover up;
how my poem was a Chilean poem about
an earthquake, then a tsunami, how some
townsfolk were spared, how others were swept
away in seconds with no time to cover up fear‐
their miedo‐no time to grab a photograph
of a grandparent, parent, child along a gentle
curve of the río Maule‐no time to think what
to do or say but run like hell to higher ground?


Italicized lines are from "There Is No Word" by Tony Hoagland. First published: "Ghazal for a Chambermaid" from Finishing Line.  

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