Estelle Ana Baca

Blog

  • And we’re back… kinda. Almost. Maybe not, but soon!

    I’m slowly but surely working my way back towards getting this site back up. Like the new look? We’ll see if it sticks. I love all this color… for now.

    In the meantime, I’ve installed a nice little rotating tagline plugin, since I couldn’t decide on a tagline for this rebirth of my site. It’s only fair to let you know that the source is from a poem I wrote last summer—yes, another @#$%ing poem—using sapphic stanzas for the first two, and then inverting the metrical pattern for the third and fourth stanzas. It’s one of my more personal poems. I figured it’d be a nice place to start, now that I’ve come clean. ♥

    “The lost river.”
    for Jeffrey—ata’tocha’he’

    It’s on that swirl of stones along the bank of
    the river where I stand, not sure where to put
    down my little boat, the one that holds all of
    my best intentions,

    for I know it will meet the indecision
    of currents, with one circuit leading to the
    here before me and the other to the now
    known within the mind.

    There’s no veil here to
    separate my wishes from obligations,
    my resolve from resignation, for the world,
    as I see it, in this here, in this now, is

    a reflection of
    everything within projected outside, and
    everything outside is prismatic against
    the definitions I’ve created within.

  • The Pact

    A villanelle from last spring. Happy Solstice, folks. ♥

    “The Pact“

    I dive headlong into a hidden pool of promise
    to deliver you an overdue apology,
    although I sense that my belated effort is fruitless.

    My guilt is a dead bird floating on the surface
    of a history we deny with purpose, rhythmically
    bobbing along over secret pools of promise.

    Back then, you presented me with your gift, wrapped in a kiss,
    and I, an anguished little girl, tossed it out callously.
    Even then, I had a sense my efforts were fruitless.

    When you sought her out for comfort, something felt amiss,
    but I dismissed it, entertaining insincere revelry,
    and dove headlong into different, cooler pools of promise.

    Then, from that cheap balcony, we used the springtime premise
    to propose a future future. It soothed my anxiety,
    although I got that the effort was misguided, fruitless.

    You offer me coy distance in the hopes that I’ll dismiss
    that old covenant as just impetuous fallacy,
    but I’ve willingly chosen untested pools of promise,
    knowing that all these efforts are belated and fruitless.

  • Imprimatur

    An older 6×10. ♥

    “Imprimatur“

    their enunciation made me take note,
    that it was used four times by four people

    —like a multiplication table—by
    the time four hours had lost their teeth—tongue swells,

    lips curl—words fell in and out of fashion
    such was my affection for you today

  • Fluid Dynamics

    This blåg is morphing into a repository for poems that I don’t feel the need to submit anywhere. It’s what I have in abundance to throw up here while I’m occupied with other things, to be perfectly honest.

    This one’s new. Last October’s new when compared with the summer of ’04, right? Anyway, it looks like a sonnet, it rhymes like a sonnet, but sister, lemme tell you: it ain’t a sonnet. There’s no volta, that’s why. ♥

    “Fluid Dynamics“

    If only these conversations weren’t lined
    with caramel-flavored puzzlements, or
    arsenic-coated promises, but mind
    you, all our dearest intentions are for

    the academics. We’re operating
    in the mines of the conditional. If
    I loved you as you love me, then posing
    these quandaries—your melodies in the rift,

    they pulse within the brain and find their way
    out of the heart with crisp logic—would be
    meaningless. Every step I’ve tried to make
    in this corridor is shadowed by the

    elegies sung for all my empty words
    —in this dissonance, I can’t move forward.

  • Spectral Classification in Mount Place.

    A little reverse double acrostic based on the OBAFGKM classification used for stars. I wrote it after staring out the window of the flat where I used to live, the charming one that overlooked Mount Place, Oxford. ♥

    “Spectral Classification in Mount Place”

    Over by those stones in the courtyard, damaged by the storm
    —bemusingly still in tact but weathered—I’m the thin crack,
    almost faint enough to miss if you aren’t really looking.
    Farther down the canal is where I live. I’m more than half-
    grizzled and twenty pounds shy, typical phenomena,
    kicking myself for not being more healthy. I’m just drab,
    making excuses for when my world was all Jericho.

  • Tooth.

    A microstorysketchylittlething I wrote a while ago. ♥

    He’s a sheep in wolf’s clothing. His approach is buoyed by a bravado that I’d never see if he were naked.

    That smile. That grin. Delicious.

    We’ll meet later tonight. There’ll be no shepherd—human or celestial—to watch over me, so when he arrives, it’ll be perfectly moonless. He’ll be perfectly helpless, too. I’ll be the only witness to his precious futility. I can smell his childish motivation all the way in the now. It’s as adorable as my sons’ pretensions to hunt birds, because I know that they enjoy the sounds of struggle more than failure or success.

    What realigns my spine with anticipation is that none—not one—of the sheep will see all that black blood spilling all over his costume.

    I’ll only have defended myself—that’s what I’ll say!—so when I cast off the costume over my costume, no one will know any different. I imagine that in my enthusiasm, I’ll end up losing a tooth in the effort. Or will it be his tooth? No matter—I’ll reclaim it without any remorse. It’s my nature.

    If only we could play this game forever… but it will end tonight. I’ll sense the fear of the wolf’s approach in those around me. It smells just like a churchyard…

    For when it’s over, my patience will have run as thin as the wool I’ve applied to conceal my weapons, to my need to survive outside captivity.

  • (Not there now.)

    Here’s a poem. It’s been webified, if you will, in that I’ve linked specific phrases to images on the web that correspond with what that which I typed into that delightful little Google Images search box. I just realized that I haven’t done this in a really long time. I used to post all my poems like this, back in the day. Huh.

    Anyway, this one’s for Catherine.

    (Not there now.)

    The street lights glazed over our gray-blue block,
    west of Fillmore, with orange loneliness,
    all the way to the airport, passing docks
    hinting to Red Hook, Greenpoint, and places

    of less color and more steel tip. From one
    home to another, where Catherine sings
    herself to sleep, to where Manhattan’s gone
    tilted over, the cars pell-mell falling

    to the eastern shores. Each sidewalk we go
    past is in their count to a thousand roads.

    Aaaaaaand if there’s one thing I’ve learned about Archangels, it’s that they don’t apologize. See you next week. ♥

  • Until Further Notice

    Nine months isn’t a terribly long time, in the whole scheme of things. Estelle wrote about a conversation we’d had about time from my perspective not too long ago. We’ve been working on this blog over the last nine months with the aim of presenting something for you every single Tuesday, and we’ve been extremely conscientious about it since the first week of August last year, too. Most of it has fallen upon my shoulders, though, and lately, I’ve had a hard time dealing with the past. I’d much rather spend my time concentrating on the present and the future, and fortunately, I work with someone who’s understanding enough to realize when I need a break.

    In the meantime, Estelle’s on point… until further notice… to employ a rather maddeningly-indirect, passively-aggressive phrase… My my my… aren’t humans something?

    Dominus vobiscum.

  • The ‘try’ in Poetry

    One of my poems was on the longlist for a poetry prize—hooray!—but alas, it was not on the shortlist—siiiiiiigh. Therefore, in the spirit of sticking with it, I present to you a curious, clinical little sevenling I wrote a few months ago. ♥

    “On Vanity”
    for Aubrey
    The artifice of courtship
    has almost no effect on
    the kernel of attraction
    that settles in the gut and
    grows. It’s no mystery those
    imperatives ensure the
    dance lilts with the chemical.

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