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      • Sara Fitzpatrick Spring 2025
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Eugene Gloria

José Rizal Walks a Mile to “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”


Listen, I say to him, Iron Butterfly’s
got nothing on Ginger Baker. And streets
like this one will be named after you.
Avenues and boulevards
wide as rivers where one can swim
for hours in traffic with buses
proud as frigates exhaling their black smoke.
In London and Paris, plaques
with your name will grace houses
where you stayed, and monuments
of you in parks from Madrid to Seattle. Yes,
even in Spain where celebrating dead
poets they executed is a thing.
Here you pause and shrug. History
is a fickle mother. In this purgatorial walk
you mourn your twenties. Seeing your face
in a mirror, though not exactly your face,
but the face of someone multiplying
like a mirror image of a mirror image.
What music did you listen to in your twenties?
Of course you bought records
— 
often random 45s and LPs of artists you
were never passionate about.
You had too many hang-ups, too Catholic,
impatient, saddled with ephemeral contingencies.
In other words you were immature.
You listened to pop, but felt guilty about it.
And jazz? You didn’t know enough.
Having yet to discover Art Blakey
and Max Roach. And Ginger Baker
was only a name you attached to Blind Faith.
Not a man to be wary of
should you happen to catch him
walking your way along a dark street
that already bears your name.



Galileo


                                                                                   I.

Beyond the ship, which               is more sea, more water
He recites           the waves scroll like a sacrament in water

Homer who was vague               with color didn’t see the way
Yeats saw the sea        he gulped like a flagon of water

Their eyes, glittering ancient eyes      alit in lapis
he recites                      in his ministry of water

Beyond the sea which              is more sea than masts
Rizal accepts the wine-dark glass        murky as water
​
Galileo, drunk with the milk of heresy, imagines space
as the sea undulating with      narcotic waves            empty of water

He declares: there is no color             in night             no color in water
And the sea—call it blind or faith       is all mystery imbued with water

                                                                                   II.


Our interlocutor, George Costanza, recounts: “The sea was angry that day, my friends
– like an old man trying to send back soup in a deli.” /.../ In a smart and select pub in
Bloomsbury, Virginia Woolf sits the young José
 Rizal down with her milky glass of
Ouzo. Ready to school the young man in her boozy, but refined pronouncements.
“Take it from me, Squanto, we should all be writing novels devoted to influenza, and
yes, odes to typhoid and pneumonia! Why not lyrics to toothache?” Rizal nods ruefully,
nursing his one-beer blues.




--
Eugene Gloria is the author of  four books of poems. His most recent collection, Sightseer in This Killing City is the recipient of the Indiana Authors Award in poetry. He is the John Rabb Emison Professor of Creative and Performing Arts and English Professor at DePauw University.

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  • Home
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  • Issue #27 Spring 2024
    • Issue #27 Art Spring 2024 >
      • Kristina Erny Spring 2024
      • Luiza Maia Spring 2024
      • Christy Lee Rogers Spring 2024
      • Erika Lynet Salvador Spring 2024
      • Marsha Solomon Spring 2024
    • Issue #27 Poetry Spring 2024 >
      • Terry Belew Spring 2024
      • Dustin Brookshire​ & Diamond Forde Spring 2024 Spring 2024
      • Dustin Brookshire​ & Caridad Moro-Gronlier Spring 2024 Spring 2024
      • Charlie Coleman Spring 2024
      • Isabelle Doyle Spring 2024
      • Reyzl Grace Spring 2024
      • Kelly Gray Spring 2024
      • Meredith Herndon Spring 2024
      • Mina Khan Spring 2024
      • Anoushka Kumar Spring 2024
      • Cate Latimer Spring 2024
      • BEE LB Spring 2024
      • Grace Marie Liu​ Spring 2024
      • Sarah Mills Spring 2024
      • Faisal Mohyuddin 2024
      • Marcus Myers Spring 2024
      • Mike Puican Spring 2024
      • Sarah Sorensen Spring 2024
      • Lynne Thompson Spring 2024
      • Natalie Tombasco Spring 2024
      • Alexandra van de Kamp Spring 2024
      • Donna Vorreyer Spring 2024
    • Fiction #27 Spring 2024 >
      • Bryan Betancur Spring 2024
      • Karen George Spring 2024
      • Raja'a Khalid Spring 2024
      • Riley Manning Spring 2024
      • Adina Polatsek Spring 2024
      • Beth Sherman Spring 2024
    • Nonfiction #27 Spring 2024 >
      • Liza Olson Spring 2024
  • Issue #28 Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Art Fall 2024 >
      • Eric Calloway Fall 2024
      • Matthew Fertel Fall 2024
      • JooLee Kang Fall 2024
      • Jian Kim Fall 2024
      • Robb Kunz Fall 2024
      • Sean Layh Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Poetry Fall 2024 >
      • Jodi Balas Fall 2024
      • Clayre Benzadón Fall 2024
      • Catherine Broadwall Fall 2024
      • Sara Burge Fall 2024
      • Judith Chalmer Fall 2024
      • Stephanie Choi Fall 2024
      • Sarah Jack Fall 2024
      • Jen Karetnick Fall 2024
      • Ae Hee Lee Fall 2024
      • Svetlana Litvinchuk Fall 2024
      • Mary Lou Buschi Fall 2024
      • Angie Macri Fall 2024
      • Gary McDowell Fall 2024
      • Sam Moe Fall 2024
      • Camille Newsom Fall 2024
      • Elizabeth O'Connell- Thompson Fall 2024
      • Olatunde Osinaike Fall 2024
      • Jessica Pierce Fall 2024
      • Diane Raptosh Fall 2024
      • Isaac Richards Fall 2024
      • Robyn Schelenz Fall 2024
      • Christopher Shipman Fall 2024
      • Alex Tretbar Fall 2024
      • Ruth Williams Fall 2024
      • Shannon K. Winston Fall 2024
      • Wendy Wisner Fall 2024
      • Anne Gerard Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Fiction Fall 2024 >
      • J​oe Baumann Fall 2024
      • ​Morganne Howell Fall 2024
      • Matt Paczkowski Fall 2024
      • Ryan Peed Fall 2024
      • Gabriella Pitts Fall 2024
      • James Sullivan Fall 2024
  • Issue #29 Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Art Spring 2025 >
      • Irina Greciuhina Spring 2025
      • Jesse Howard Spring 2025
      • Paul Simmons Spring 2025
      • Marsha Solomon Spring 2025
      • Elzbieta Zdunek Spring 2025
      • Na Yoon Amelia Cha-Ryu Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Poetry Spring 2025 >
      • Deborah Bacharach Spring 2025
      • Diego Báez Spring 2025
      • Jaswinder Bolina Spring 2025
      • ​Ash Bowen Spring 2025
      • Christian J. Collier Spring 2025
      • ​Shou Jie Eng Spring 2025
      • Sara Fitzpatrick Spring 2025
      • Matthew Gilbert Spring 2025
      • Tammy C. Greenwood Spring 2025
      • Alejandra Hernández ​Spring 2025
      • Ben Kline ​Spring 2025
      • ​David Moolten Spring 2025
      • ​Tamer Mostafa Spring 2025
      • ​Rongfei Mu Spring 2025
      • Cynthia Neely Spring 2025
      • Pablo Otavalo Spring 2025
      • ​Bleah Patterson Spring 2025
      • ​M.A. Scott Spring 2025
      • ​Liam Strong ​ Spring 2025
      • Alexandra van de Kamp Spring 2025
      • ​Cassandra Whitaker Spring 2025
      • Angelique Zobitz Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Fiction Spring 2025 >
      • Vanessa Blakeslee Spring 2025
      • K. J. Coyle Spring 2025
      • Meredith MacLeod Davidson Spring 2025
      • Jessica Mosher Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Nonfiction Spring 2025 >
      • JM Huscher Spring 2025
      • Qurrat ul Ain Raza Abbas Spring 2025