Winter 2023 | Lis Sanchez Reads "Miracle of Trout” – MQR Sound
Lis Sanchez reads her poem, "Miracle of Trout", for MQR's Winter 2023 issue.
Carla Medina de Sánchez
August 8, 1899*
Thank you, hurricane, for trout soaring over the orchard.
Thank you, whizzing bits of insects, for your sting.
Thank you, crippled mule, paddling hooves-over-head
into a tumult you cannot comprehend.
Thank you, uprooted ceiba, for this hole that holds me
in its odor of decay.
Thank you, roots, green veins of my mother’s hands.
Thank you, rag wedding doll with your eyes bitten off.
Thank you, ants.
Thank you, stone kneeling bench.
Thank you, jealousy, for staving the small red boat of my heart.
Thank you, Utuado, perfumed wig of desire.
Thank you, operatic notes falling like dark feathers
from the mouth of the songstress into the orchestra pit,
lifting and dropping with the pangs of Manuél’s guitar.
Thank you, moon that shivers out in the open.
Thank you, splendors of tongue and skin.
Thank you, brook where animals slake their thirst.
Thank you, path twisting up from Utuado. I’ll wait
for you, Manuél, by the hanging footbridge
if it holds by a strand.
I'll bring you my hands full of butterflies,
though they be fragments,
and let them fall
into yours.
___________________________________________________________
*landfall of San Ciriaco, the most destructive hurricane in Puerto Rico's history
To read more from this issue, you can purchase the Winter 2023 issue here.
