#MIDDLEBURY
When Doves
R.A. Villanueva
At the columbarium dug
by hand, a man points to where rock
doves would be brought to nest, their eggs
tended by priests, and the cave locked
at sundown, guarded by hired
knives. The flock meant meat for the dry
times; saltpeter; yolks needed to bind
portraits to walls, to raise a sky
gilded with violets and myrrh.
Tonight, my mother paints her nails
black – a shade she names, “Dark Matter.”
She numbers what’s left of her cells,
tells us of this burning inside
her knees, laughs a promise to fight.
About this poem
“Consider this, from Carl Phillips’ ‘The Art of Daring’: ‘The poem is a form of negotiation with what haunts us … insofar as what haunts us is, in part, who we are.’ To believe that means trusting in echoes and spirits and strange rhymes. And so, I am: secret frescoes and cave churches; the drum loops and distortions of Prince and the Revolution; my mother’s devotionals, her defiance.” – R.A. Villanueva
About R.A. Villanueva
R.A. Villanueva is the author of “Reliquaria” (University of Nebraska Press, 2014). He lives in London.
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day@poets.org.
(c) 2016 R.A. Villanueva. Originally published by the Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.
