Insomnia, poems by Maria Castro Dominguez
Maria Castro Dominguez is the author of ‘A Face in The Crowd’ which is her 2016 Erbacce Press prize winning collection. Winner of the third prize in Brittle Star´s Poetry Competition 2018 and finalist in the 2019 Stephen A DiBiase Poetry contest NY and Mslexia Max Poetry Competition. Joint winner of the Orbis 185 Readers’ Award 2019. She has flash fiction and poems published in literary journals and anthologies such as: Obsessed With Pipework, Sarvasti, Apogee, The Long-Islander Huntington Journal, StepAway, London Grip, Popshot Magazine and Fly on the Wall Press’anthology ‘The Weird and Wonderful’ edited by Isabelle Kenyon. Born and raised in London; she holds a Bachelor’s degree in English philology and works as a freelance writer, proof reader and language teacher.
Insomnia
Mama uses a rosary to sleep,
her fingers weaving between
rosewood beads buoyed
up by her bed sheets.
I use the radio,
listen to long haul drivers
relieved to speak over
the monotony of wheels
at 3am, when photos of new-borns,
a faux rabbit’s foot, and other charms
that make their cab a home
fail them.
I am complicit in their travel;
prayers like voices
strung together in the dark.
A globe as a present for a ninety year old
You wanted a globe
for your birthday
with hand painted ships
engraving around its meridian
a spin irresistible
your man had been a sailor
and I’d followed him
although you missed me
fussed each time I left
making me fear I´d lose you
if I dared to leave you bereft
on your birthday
you placed the gift between
your bed and the oxygen
showing me how
you would follow me
around the world
with nothing but your fingers.
True or not, I’m ready to believe it.
After Wisława Szymborsk
I was told after Darwin it was true
the toughest species won or
survived, not
the weak of heart, but I´m
most gullible always ready
to reach out to
anything beautiful to believe
retrieving a truth (or not) from it.
Solitude is a Cactus
White spines pricking leather skin.
An old man´s stubble antennae-like
hearing children run out of school,
and parents picking them out
from a spill of high-pitched shrills.
Like a thirty year old dress
sequins missing, drooping threads
buried in the back of a shelf.
Like an eight year olds’ present
buried in scraps of party paper.
Solitude is forgetting you could
remember who I was.
© Maria Castro Dominguez