Don Edward Walicek
is a poet and linguist who writes about precarity, belonging, U.S. imperialism, and related topics. His poetry has appeared in The Wild Word; Califragile, A Literary Journal of Climate and Social Justice; and New Feathers Anthology. His academic publications include the co-edited volume Guantánamo and American Empire; the Humanities Respond. A former Fulbright Scholar and ACLS Fellow, he is a professor at the University of Puerto Rico at Río Piedras and currently serves as editor of the Caribbean studies journal Sargasso.
On The Back Patio at Midnight
I tell my dear friends
hope is like a blindfold,
that my partner & I put it on,
that for seven years it fit us
like it was our second skin
as we dreamed hand and hand
until an early March evening
when I awoke alone
sleepless & hopeful in the tropics.
Beneath their wooden trellis,
one of them says I’m family.
We drink chilled red wine
& talk of recent wars,
80’s music, & hurricanes.
Soft sprinkling raindrops
cool my cheeks & slide
right down my back as if
water’s peace already knows me.
I tell my dear friends
that when hope comes back
smiling, promising
to clean things up,
I must force it into a box
store it high on a shelf,
sweep its dust to the wind,
& listen . . . as my bare bones speak
back through the bathroom mirror.
Their five-year-old son
pulls me by my thumb
into the starlit garden
just steps away. He points up
above our heads, smiling.
I exhale slowly:
The massive grape vine
above us rests proud in the light—
twisted, knotted, almost leafless.