Gloria D. Gonsalves is author of children’s stories and a poet. Poetry is a medium for her to learn, teach, and advocate. As a poet, she focuses on maintaining, passing, and adding to poetry so it lives on for the next generation, whether illustrious or not. She has four poetry collections: Even Flowers Know That Water is Useless Without Roots (2023), Let’s Go Walking in the Storm (2020), Let’s Go Dancing in the Light (2017), and Mists of Sense Require Fierce Poesy (2014). She is also the founder of WoChiPoDa.com, an initiative to instill the love of poetry in children.
Super Citizenship
I, the deity you created based on your perception,
grant you from the sky to the sea a super passport
neither divine nor human by naturalization.
Below are the projected deeds of your citizenship.
You will declare yourself superior among the
living and non-living without their consent.
You will proclaim yourself my sole child,
born to save the weak after silencing them.
You will proclaim yourself a child of light
and, with this belief, send others to life in hell.
You will justify your actions with virtues, such as
freedom or peace, while denying them to others.
You will speak of wisdom and morals, yet your
actions and inactions will surpass immoral benchmarks.
You will attempt to redeem yourself in big acts,
but your narcissistic ways will always win you back.
You will love big toys and brag about them;
you will create artillery for little and big bodies.
You will rule the sky as the wings clipper,
and doves will evolve to wingless on land.
You will excel as a coward witnessing suffering
for fear of losing face among your fellow cowards.
You will implement double standards in battles
to fertilize local and foreign fields for your cattle.
You will love adventures in the rivers and seas,
along with your fleet of elegant excess and waste.
You will be prominent for killing marine species
to make space for your trunks of arsenal junk.
You will hunt for natural resources, even if
it means your folks are killed in finding them.
You will succeed in burning your only home,
where other living and non-living things dwell.
You will be infuriated as you read this,
and you might resort to teaching me a lesson.
You will either avenge by being all of the above
or be courageous and rise above the status quo.
Congratulations on joining the super citizenship.
The sky awaits your inventive crippling methods.
The land awaits your selfish mining spree.
The sea awaits your contaminating storms.
The living and non-living await their extinction.
Will you then grasp that super is not the future?
Under The Sea
Under the sea, something is furious
and I, a mere mortal, by the edges
sit in awe and fear of the thunders.
The rocks withstand but are wary
of the gushing and frothing waves.
Who dared this sea to such raging?
The palms and agaves, bewildered,
wave the hills to roll downhill.
Perhaps this sea will calm down.
It has been a gray day of sea rage
and I, a mere human, opt to paint it.
Does the sea yearn for a fierce portrait?
For it has been known with mortals
to enrage our love when all is calm,
only to love harder when calm rages.
Under the sea, something is furious
and I watch with a poet’s curiosity
as the sea evolves into a mountain.
Glyfada, Corfu, September 2022
LOVEBIRDS
* For this poem, I used five words of bird sounds to portray the sentiments of the heart: to GLACITATE is to honk like a goose, to CROCITATE is to caw like a raven, to CUCUBATE is to hoot like an owl, to PUPILLATE is to cry like a peacock, to CUCURIATE is to call like a rooster.
Your heart is a fluttering nest of flatter.
See him, and desire speeds and honks
gla-cit-ate,
like a goose chasing after her chicks.
See her with him, and envy gnaws and caws
crocit-ate,
throbbing through your veins like a starving raven.
Draw closer, and your dreams shoot and hoot
cu-cu-ba-te,
an owl envisioning the future with him, you hunt.
Give in to him, and your wings glide and fly
p-u-p-i-l-l-a-t-e,
panting in the rainbows of a sated peacock.
The day after, your shared longings and cravings
cucu-riate,
to a pact that calls you to a union like a rooster.
Your broken heart is a nest rife with life.
How To Make Homemade Tomato Sauce
Next to the pot of boiling water,
bring your heart to the table.
Put whole tomatoes in
until skins start to peel.
It is in your wellbeing
to rid layers of hostility.
Skin after skin,
chamber after chamber.
Peel and squeeze out seeds,
breathe and wipe out spite.
Chop tomatoes and
set aside, ready for cooking.
Stir the vessels and
steady valves, ready for redemption.
Cook onion, carrot, and garlic.
Add in pureed tomatoes.
Pump in humility, kindness, and love.
Fill your aorta with them.
Simmer tomatoes for two hours.
Serve sauce with favorite dish.
Place the heart back into the body.
Serve others with healed intents.
My Son And Bare Trees
I cherish my son as I do those bare trees.
Some days, I travel far away to the sky
by the branches of his prose and poems,
turning the clouds over like book pages.
Sometimes, the clouds join in the quest,
pouring joyous rain to my trunk and roots.
Other times, the clouds scatter in shapes,
daring him with riddles for me to learn.
There are also days when I ache for him,
after Lord Wind comes to collect the rent
dressed in a season suit of gales and gusts;
bottom to apex, leaf by leaf, my son sheds
himself to self, as age adds and life changes.
I hold him with eyes of autumnal admiration,
yet I know winter is coming, and he is bare.
The Galway Review 