Guidebooks for the Dead by Cynthia Cruz

March 5, 2015   Guidebooks for the Dead   Cynthia Cruz

Mother’s crimson leather bags Crammed with saint cards And tiny glass bottles of liquor. The bright stitch Of God’s final coming. Dirt and dregs, silt and stars. The sweet song Of poverty Rinsing through me Like the memory Of a dream.            Copyright © 2015 by Cynthia Cruz. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “I am currently at work on a new collection of poems ‘on’ or ‘around’ ruins—which, in my mind, is a photograph of the end; of junk and rubble, of us with our things. In this ‘snapshot’ is my mother, while she was still in Germany, still a dancer, before she became a woman in exile.” —Cynthia Cruz   Cynthia Cruz is the author ofWunderkammer (Four Way Books, 2014). She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in Brooklyn, New York. Most Recent Book by Cruz   Wunderkammer (Four Way Books, 2014) "My Mother on an Evening in Late Summer" by Mark Strand "My Mother Was No White Dove" by Reginald Shepherd "On this Very Street in Belgrade" by Charles Simic Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006,Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends.