Tag: Louisa Muniz

Three Poems by Louisa Muniz

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About-Face on Smith Street

In the window at Hamilton’s Shop,
the mannequin wore

bell bottoms,
a suede fringe belt,
a multicolored vest.

Her body posed,
mine falling as I ran
to catch up to him.

It had been months.

I tripped on the uneven sidewalk.

I feigned calm
as the woman hurrying past
asked if I was hurt.

Hurt? Let me stitch the frayed hem
of a daughter’s heart.

The only time I remember
my father laughing

was watching The Honeymooners…
to the moon, Alice, to the moon.

Laughter ashed in his throat,
moved jagged through me.

I picked myself up before he turned.
His shadow oblivious to mine.

Unscathed, the mannequin stared
straight ahead.

I turned and walked the opposite way.

*

I Ask God to Lend a Hand

The morning stirs its cup
into the bowl of day.
I wake to hay in my head.

In the kitchen I gently rub
the money tree’s leaves
between my palms.

Through the window,
the rabbit’s stillness
mesmerizes.

Outside, I draw the dogwood’s
white blossoms to my face.

Its branches bob back & forth.
I give her the attention I need.

There were times I gave away everything:
my secrets, my clothes, even my time.

Now I give in to silence.
Listen for God’s guidance.

God trills like a blackbird,
chirps like a sparrow.

During the hour of tenderness
the sun gathers on my shoulders.

Purple self-seeding flowers
sprout between stones.

I open my hands.
Put down the sword.

Let what’s good in.

*

Keeping the Faith

My husband’s car sits unused for weeks.
He asks me to start it.

To his surprise, it starts immediately.

See… you have to have faith, I say.
Faith is a key and a good battery, he replies.

I smile & wonder after all this time
how we see things so differently.

It’s June. Jasmine pinwheels perfume the air.

The dogwood tree outside our window
strews blossoms across the pavement.

I point out how beautiful the tree looks.
He glances, grunts. Uh-huh.

At the supermarket I meet an old colleague.
She tells me her husband died four years ago.
Being alone is really, really terrible.

After weeks of caring for an ill husband,
I’m filled with gratitude.

At home, I lean into his moss-sweet heart.

Come sit with me, tough guy.
I’ll keep the faith.
You keep it running.

The wild horse in him breaks through.

*

Louisa Muniz lives in Sayreville, N.J. She holds a Master’s in Curriculum and Instruction from Kean University. Her work has appeared in ONE ART, Tinderbox Journal, Palette Poetry, SWWIM, Jelly Bucket, PANK Magazine, Anti-Heroin Chic and elsewhere. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize. Her debut chapbook, After Heavy Rains was released in December, 2020. Her chapbook, The Body is More Than a Greening Thing was published in June of 2025 by Finishing Line Press.

Two Poems by Louisa Muniz

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Long-Held Forgiveness

When he slapped me for answering back I was halfway
through Ferlinghetti’s Coney Island of the Mind:

the world is a beautiful place to be born into if you don’t mind
happiness not always being so very much fun.

At thirteen, born was a mute swan of unrest.

Years later, I’d dial his number, anxiously waiting
for him to answer, yet secretly hoping he wouldn’t

in order to avoid the awkward small talk
in the field of long silences between strangers.

If he did pick up, I’d affirm later to myself:
I am a good daughter, once the milkman’s daughter,

la hija del lechero, who rose daily before dawn
to deliver fresh eggs, butter & glass-bottled milk
to designated milk boxes on neighborhood porches.

At the end of it all, I visited him daily, in hospice.
Sat in the uneasy chair of a man orphaned at seven.

A man who never stayed around long enough
for a daughter holding absence in the hollow of her ribs.

Oh, how we ache for what is left whispering in us.
Oh, how we stumble through the mire, falter in the swale.

Slipping beneath the floating sheets before he passed,
he whispered, oigo musica Cubana.

I heard no Cuban music of danzon or rumba or son.
I heard no words of endearment, no words of regret
escape his slackened jaw in the slender hour.

What I heard was the weight of the rain.
How it pummeled the earth outside the window.

And how the earth embraced it.
Let it flow as runoff.
Let it go as long-held forgiveness.

*

Victory

Mother wasn’t a saint but she could’ve been sainted. Made holy. Exalted.
She was devoted to good in a way I never cared to be. Instead, I cared to be
saved by a blazing sunset while inhaling a Tango screwdriver. Father mistook
her heart for a secondhand rug, her hands for two empty jugs; a homemaker
in a housecoat. You could say I drank from the cup of resentment. You could say
it draped the house like a curtain of smoke. Through the cracked bedroom door
I watched Mother pray. Mouth salted in sorrow, she prayed to be seen in the moon’s
rosary of light, to be heard by the one who art in heaven. Ask me how I learned to
smokescreen sadness. Ask me how my body splintered, thin skinned, until every
muscle carried the weight of her name. When her mouth parched in enough,
she cut him loose. That was the year she discovered Elizabeth Taylor. Idolized her.
Framed Liz’s Life Magazine pictures on her bedroom and living room walls.
Painted a mole above her lip with an eyebrow pencil & cinched her waist to show-off
her curvaceous figure. Wore Victory Red lipstick as part of masking a brave face.
If she was looking for something glamorous in her ordinary life, I can’t say.

*

Louisa Muniz lives in Sayreville, N.J. She holds a Master’s in Curriculum and Instruction from Kean University. Her work has appeared in ONE ART, Tinderbox Journal, Palette Poetry, SWWIM, Jelly Bucket, PANK Magazine, Anti-Heroin Chic and elsewhere. She won the Sheila-Na-Gig Spring Contest for her poem Stone Turned Sand. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize. Her debut chapbook, After Heavy Rains was released in December, 2020. Her chapbook, The Body is More Than a Greening Thing will be published in the spring of 2025 by Finishing Line Press.

Three Poems by Louisa Muniz

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We Will Remember

On the internet you can listen to the 9-11 conversation between
passenger Todd Beamer and operator Lisa Jefferson,
moments before Flight 93 went down.

I remember Jacqueline, my second-grade student,
who drew me a picture of a building ablaze
with people jumping from the top floor window.

I was so scared, she said. At first I thought it was bad weather
we were having but it was so much worse.

I can’t remember what I wore last week but I remember
on that day I wore a pink linen skirt & a matching knit top.

I can’t remember what I did with that outfit but I remember
I could never bring myself to wear it again.

I plant forget-me-nots every summer but I can’t remember
if they’re more partial to shade or sun.

Twenty- three years ago, I knew nothing
of digging up the earth to stay grounded.

Twenty-three years later, rain is falling in sheets
& down the street a car is floating in water.

And a man who lives alone in another town
has a leaking roof & is about to lose everything.

And a man who is a convicted felon has promised
to make our country great again.

It’s the year of the snake.

Outside the wolf moon is full—
a catharsis in naming things you wish to let go.

Everywhere we exist we will remember
the weight of what was.

*

Red Sirens

The common tern sits in fractured light
for hours on the ice pond.

Winter in her bones.

Its days are the length of a winding river.

I want to tell you about melancholy. It’s ancestral—
a blanket of resolve hand-knitted upon me.

I’ve grown fond of being alone.

Is each day an un-mapping of never going back?

In the dream I break into a house.
I must save my children. I search
and search but I can’t find them.

What do I really seek?

Across the footbridge the baby sparrow
finds refuge in the leafless tree
that aspires to the sky.

It’s left its nest and won’t return.

But what of this brave new world,
a voice asks.

No sun to warm its wings or seeds
to speak of beneath the barren sky.

In the distance—
sound of red sirens
screaming.

*

The Weight of Warmth

January—
gray-eared, stretches out like a cat.

Blooming shades of purple. I tire of my mood.
Alexa plays Gymnopedie No.1. on loop.

Intentional simplicity.

No smell of tulips clawing through the dirt.
The sparrows interrogate the empty feeder.

I roam the house slippered in thought.
Best feeling thought, I tell myself.

I build a house of summer sky & sweetgrass.
Design the orange door leading out, open.
Drag my feet from room to room.

In the bedroom, I discover
the dormant orchid awakened.

The flower buds swell.
The petals poised in promise.

I squeal in delight like a solitaire singing
its tinny song to no one but itself.

The winking sun sprawls across the bed.
I lay down next to it.

Hitch on to the weight of its warmth.

Later, the wind—flutters, swells, sways—
to the winter blues of dusk.

*

Louisa Muniz lives in Sayreville, N.J. She holds a Master’s in Curriculum and Instruction from Kean University. Her work has appeared in ONE ART, Tinderbox Journal, Palette Poetry, SWWIM, Jelly Bucket, PANK Magazine, Anti-Heroin Chic and elsewhere. She won the Sheila-Na-Gig Spring Contest for her poem Stone Turned Sand. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize. Her debut chapbook, After Heavy Rains was released in December, 2020. Her chapbook, The Body is More Than a Greening Thing will be published in the spring of 2025 by Finishing Line Press.

After Watching World News by Louisa Muniz

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After Watching World News

Some days my body carries less of the holy
more of the grief it can’t help but hold.

On days I don’t know how to take
one more of the world’s sorrows

I make of myself a light, needle-colored
under a moon threaded in funeral cloth.

When my fifteen year old granddaughter tells me,
I’m working on becoming a kinder, better person,

last night’s news lingers in my head: hostages,
bodies, guns, the thistle & thrum of all we’ve done.

Why do we hold back our good will?
The one thing we could give of ourselves.

Who knew despair could be a palpable thing?
Yet, the heart allows both light & dark to enter it

as it commits & contracts to the ocean of its wants.
On any given bankrupt morning I might finally stop asking,

where’s my stuff to the universe.
Do I really think I’m owed something?

But, if it’s still a thing, I’m in the marketplace for gratitude.
Isn’t the enough I have, more than enough?

As for hope, I position it mid-height on my tongue,
mid-day in my body, mid-prayer in my burning hands.

*

Louisa Muniz lives in Sayreville, N.J. She holds a Master’s in Curriculum and Instruction from Kean University. Her work has appeared in SWWIM, ONE ART, Palette Poetry, Gyroscope, Tinderbox Journal, PANK Magazine, Shark Reef and elsewhere. She won the Sheila-Na-Gig 2019 Spring Contest for her poem Stone Turned Sand. Her work has been nominated a few times for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize. Her debut chapbook, After Heavy Rains by Finishing Line Press was released in December, 2020. She is presently working on her second chapbook.

Empty Nest by Louisa Muniz

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Empty Nest

All summer long the mourning dove sits
in a shaded crook of the hickory tree.

She nests in a hard-to-spot space
and waits for her forthcoming squabs.

Stock-still, she sits, morning, noon & night.

Our eyes lock as I water the hanging begonia
on the tree’s branch.

The wind slows, then stirs to shape
& shift the air around us.

All summer long I waited for things to fall in place.
Before the surgery, the doctor asked,

would you like a picture of the kidney
you’ll be donating to your husband?

Days later, at home, I prop the picture
on my desk next to the window.

Beyond the window, sunlight leaks
like lemonade into the empty nest.

The song of the mourning dove can be heard.
The shadow of the mourning dove cannot be seen.

Some things resound long enough to be missed.

*

Louisa Muniz lives in Sayreville, N.J. She holds a Master’s in Curriculum and Instruction from Kean University. Her work has appeared in Tinderbox Journal, Palette Poetry, SWWIM, Poetry Quarterly, PANK Magazine, Jabberwock Review and elsewhere. She won the Sheila-Na-Gig 2019 Spring Contest for her poem Stone Turned Sand. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize. Her debut chapbook, After Heavy Rains by Finishing Line Press was released in December, 2020.