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    • Fall | 2012 Reading
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NAYELLY BARRIOS

On Holding Shadows Hostage


you have been fighting off lions 
                                    all afternoon 
     say you have locked them 
                        in the room we hang fruit to dry 
and all you want now 
                        is your shadow 
                        which I keep under my bed 
                                                next to a bach trumpet 
            
nightly 
            your shadow types up letters 
            the dingswipe&keys keep me up 
wishing 
            I did not keep that old typewriter 
            had never stashed that shadow there 

     I say     your shadow has gone stale     you’ll have to remold 
 
                                    & reattach it 
  
like peter pan?      you ask  
                                     with soap?
     but we both know 
that didn’t work 
 
you go into your backyard studio 
     sponge & bucket 
            knife in hand 
                        grind shards of glass                                     
                                    old scraps of clay 

after some days 
                        you emerge 
            a ten ft shadow by your side 
     like a brush on a palette 
            silent 
     still 
                        I’ll grow into it  

every dusk 
                        I see you fishing with your shadow 
ponds and lakes no longer enough 
            your sink line curves toward the sky 
                                    like an elephant’s trunk
                                                hooked on to nothing yet 
 


102  The Paris-American

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Nayelly Barrios is a Rio Grande Valley native. Her work has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Puerto del Sol, and DIAGRAM. She has been featured as the LoWriter of the Week on Poet Juan Felipe Herrera's website and is a recent participant of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. She is a founding editor of Ostrich Review.

   Next week's poet:

 Tory Adkisson
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