For Eduardo C. Corral, photos will not be simply ornaments however are sometimes charged with emotion. On this 15-line poem, each stanza contains particular but capacious imagery. Even the title, a metropolis in Southern Spain, whereas not overtly illustrative, conjures wealthy footage within the creativeness. The primary two stanzas are plainly descriptive, however the tone good points gravity within the third stanza with “my reflection bleeds.” The third by way of sixth stanzas are microscopic, focusing the reader on beadlike visuals, distracting us for a second earlier than Corral jolts the center awake with longing and ache. The stanza and line breaks within the penultimate line, together with the extension of the standard 14-line sonnet, reveal Corral’s talent in regulating a poem’s (and a reader’s) emotions. Chosen by Victoria Chang
Córdoba
By Eduardo C. Corral
In a toilet
with turquoise partitions,
just a few blocks
from the Mezquita,
my reflection bleeds. I attain
to wash, with my thumb,
an oval mirror speckled
with toothpaste,
& smeared, now,
with penicillin-rich blood,
then I keep in mind —
pull again my left hand.
I don’t contact mirrors. It’s incorrect,
my father all the time mentioned,
to the touch a person.
Victoria Chang is a poet whose new guide of poems is “The Timber Witness Every part” (Copper Canyon Press, 2022). Her fifth guide of poems, “Obit” (2020), was named a New York Instances Notable Guide and a Time Should-Learn. She lives in Los Angeles and teaches in Antioch College’s M.F.A. program. Eduardo C. Corral teaches within the M.F.A. program at North Carolina State College. In 2011, he gained the Yale Youthful Poets Prize and was additionally the recipient of a Whiting Award. He’s the writer of the collections “Gradual Lightning” (Yale College Press, 2012) and “Guillotine” (Graywolf Press, 2020), from which this poem is taken. “Guillotine” was longlisted for the 2020 Nationwide Guide Award and was a finalist for the 2021 Lambda Literary Award.
