City of Sisters

It’s not known for its sentimentality.

This city

boos and beheads

faster than you can squeeze

mustard on a pretzel.

It’s strange to imagine

comfort under the armor

of steel and glass,

but it is real.

There is also steel in the smiles

of my sisters in arms,

as they say, “Yes, this is bad

but we will make it better.

Yes they aren’t listening,

but we can be louder.”

They scoff at admonitions

to be nice.

Nice? In this city?

Why be merely nice

when you can be ferocious in your kindness,

unapologetically baring your teeth

to protect those

with barely the strength to whimper?

Nice doesn’t go marching in the wintertime.

But Philadelphia ferocity

burns and ignites belief

to keep one warm in the middle of the storm.

Song Choice: Good Girls by Elle King

The amazing Mimi Salazar and me at a Tuesdays With Toomey event
Photo taken by the equally amazing Kelly Vincent.

This poem was inspired by the prompt given over at A Dash of Sunny, Prompt Nights: Belief is the ignition switch that gets you off the launching pad, and also in no small way, by the ladies over at Tuesdays With Toomey. Thank you for helping me believe in humanity again. This is also linked with the Tuesday Platform over at Imaginary Gardens for Real Toads.

By Rommy Cortez-Driks

Tell Tale

I get nervous

as I see it drifting down my sleeve,

the tender tattered mess

I call my heart.

I call upon any artifice I can

in those moments,

when I fear all my dreaming and desires

are naked in an innocent display.

Every breath not filled with words

starts as perhaps, perhaps,

the most right and holy moment

to relieve myself of the burden,

and speaking

all the thoughts that gyre

underneath my flesh.

But moments pass,

and the sting of those wasted moments

is pitiless of the bruises already there

on my resigned heart

shoved hurriedly off my sleeve

and caged inside my ribs where it belongs.

Song Choice: If by Janet Jackson

This poem was inspired by the prompt given over at Imaginary Gardens With Real Toads prompt: Get Listed!, where we were required to use several words in our poem (I used tatter, artifice, holy, gyre, wasted, and pitiless). There was also a bit of inspiration from A Dash of Sunny's Edgar Allen Poe prompt last week. I had started something for that but I wasn't quite happy with the original direction I took. For some reason this week's Toad's prompt, plus memories of being a college girl with a crush on this sweet guy I knew (spoiler alert: we've been married 21 years now) perked up my original idea to play around with ideas around the phrase "tell-tale heart" and this was created. It is also linked to Poetry Pantry #339 over at Poets United. 

By Rommy Cortez-Driks

First Generation Ghost

If you don’t see it, you don’t have to think about it.

Don’t think. That might remind you

of the world existing just outside the borders

of the manufactured frame you’ve been given.

The multi-hued world people like me live in.

Of course we’re still there,

inside your balance adjusted frame.

Otherworldly ghosts moving inside your scenes,

turning the smaller gears you’ve eschewed -

the gears that keep a pulse of a nation smooth.

Though my first cries were made on this soil,

I was reminded my place was with the ghosts.

“Be quiet, so you don’t scare people

With your arcane Latin tongue.”

So many hoops to jump through

to fit the definition of a woman of substance

yet feeling more insubstantial as I go through every one

to occupy a solid space in the world.

I’m too tired to jump them.

I reject being silent. I will tell my own stories.

Let people squirm when I write

the stories in my blood and sign my name

in letters larger than John Hancock’s.

The world may be unready for more ghost stories,

but I'm ready to tell them.

Song Choice: Immigrants (We Get the Job Done) - The Hamilton Mix Tape

This poem was inspired by the prompt given over at Imaginary Gardens With Real Toads: On Poetry, Writing & Metaphor - Dreaming With Stacie. Stacie asked us to look around our environment and create a poem about something see/ hear/ smell using an extended metaphor. The Hamilton mix tape (as well as the Hamilton soundtrack) is on heavy rotation in my home and the song Immigrants (We Get the Job Done) had just come up in my music shuffle. The line "America's ghost writers" is still one of the most brilliant things I've ever heard, especially in the context of the song. It's hard for me not to feel inspired every time I hear it. So I didn't fight it and created this poem. 

By Rommy Cortez-Driks