Yaddyra Peralta


YADDYRA PERALTA is a poet and fiction writer whose book reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in  the Miami New Times and FloridaBookReview.com.  Her poetry was recently featured in the WLRN Under the Sun story, "Portrait of a Poet as a Young Woman."  She is an MFA candidate at Florida International University.




Father's Heart

When they opened you, sawed
through breastbone, did you feel
the exerted, two-handed rending
of your ribs?      

So much work to see
that knotted muscle:

that strutting heart
of the mambo, the hustle, the punta,
that heart of NYC, old Chelsea, dancing
the night away. Fighting heart skulking
through the jungles of Vietnam,
truculent heart that hardly knows me now.

After the surgery you let me feed you, 
you start to tell me about el indio Lempira,
the Lenca killed in ambush by the Spanish;
the school kids in Honduras re-enact it every year.
Despite your dark skin, you were often a Conquistador,
the one who swiftly shot an arrow through the chief’s heart.



Learning to Read


A set of signs in a fixed order, the alphabet
represents the basic sounds that humans make;
When combined these make glorious words:
tree, cloud, snake, hermit, light.

My second graders grip pencils to write the words I say.
Ebin shows off her bridge spelled like breach
and Gary argues when I say that though wrong,
she has made a word.

I say, imagine a man who wants to be so alone,
he spends seven years building obstacles around his little house.
Then I must explain obstacles, so with their help
I draw a hut surrounded by a wall

of overturned chairs, desks, around that a moat,
and then Gary requests spontaneous balls of fire.
Now, I tell them, close your eyes. Whatever
you do to get inside means breach.

And with their silent tunneling, flying
and karate-kicks, I hope
they make it in.


Index