The Gate

Never mind thought,
its insect static. This

is about the body—mine—
caught between a hung moon
and the edge of the road.

I stood alone in the dark
with a flashlight in my mouth,
spinning and spinning
the combination. Nothing.

Night pressed in. Deer.
Crickets hawked
their delicate wares.

In panic the mind leaves
and the body collides
with its animal limits. Alert

with fear I flashed
on my remaining hours. When
the shackle gave way, too late—

I was already stone.


by Mari L’Esperance


Born in Kobe, Japan, Mari L’Esperance is a Hapa poet whose first full-length collection The Darkened Temple was awarded the 2007 Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry and published by the University of Nebraska Press in September 2008. An earlier collection Begin Here was awarded a Sarasota Poetry Theatre Press Chapbook Prize. A graduate of the Creative Writing Program at New York University and a recipient of fellowships and grants from The New York Times, Hedgebrook, and Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, L’Esperance lives and writes in the San Francisco Bay Area.


*Photo courtesy of Guillermo Baixauli.
in Zócalo Public Square