ANGELA NARCISO TORRES  on

​Lisel Mueller
When I Am Asked

When I am asked
how I began writing poems,
I talk about the indifference of nature.
 
It was soon after my mother died,
a brilliant June day,
everything blooming.
 
I sat on a gray stone bench
in a lovingly planted garden,
but the day lilies were as deaf
as the ears of drunken sleepers
and the roses curved inward.
Nothing was black or broken
and not a leaf fell
and the sun blared endless commercials
for summer holidays.
 
I sat on a gray stone bench
ringed with the ingenue faces
of pink and white impatiens
and placed my grief
in the mouth of language,
the only thing that would grieve with me.

Angela Narciso Torres is the author of What Happens Is Neither (Four Way Books 2021), Blood Orange (winner of the 2013 Willow Books Literature Award for Poetry) and the chapbook, To the Bone (Sundress Publications 2020). Recent work appears in POETRY, Prairie Schooner, and Harpur Palate. A graduate of Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers and Harvard Graduate School of Education, Angela has received fellowships from Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Illinois Arts Council, and Ragdale Foundation. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Manila, she currently resides in San Diego. She serves as a senior and reviews editor for RHINO Poetry.