You are my first listeners, my friends

Poetry by Alexandra La Golosa

Poetic Contest

by Alexandra La Golosa

As any rhyming child since tender age
I have been harnessed to go on stage
By teacher of the literature.

I really don’t know what she could see
In me, back in the schooldays; anyways,
She sent my poems to a local contest.

Unfortunately, I’ve been kind of sick
As Day of Doom approached, that’s why she
Has fished out other girl to read instead of me.

But I remember — lying in the bed
With mingled guilt and sad embarrassment
I hated the thought of someone reading my works
As all the others represent their own.

It was familiar bite of my ill conscience.
So I have persuaded my dear parents
To bring me to that silly childish contest.

I can’t recall what I have felt on stage…
It all went blank, as memory itself
Rejects the shameful records.

But after I have finished — there she came,
My teacher, to defend my stained name,
And she began to cite her favorite places
With proper stresses, proper intonations,
And then she said that I could not myself
Expose the inner beauty of my verses.

That strange experience had a grip on me:
I often brood on how it all could be
If I just stayed in bed and simply let
Some other, better reader in my stead.
Could I win in that case that damned contest?…

And what the matter after many days,
When time erased in mercy those events?

But still, I nevermore read them aloud.
My music never has been played in halls.
My words were buried in the cartoon boxes,
And finally, their home in dumpster found…

I’ve closed myself inside that contest shade.
And you are my first listeners, my friends.

I can’t express how much
I cherish your attention.

*Alexandra was released from the Eloy Detention Center on April 21, 2016, after 444 days in detention with the support of Mariposas Sin Fronteras, Casa Mariposa, and Casa Libre en la Solana in Tucson, Arizona, who raised funds for her $5,000 bond. Over 50 people, many of whom are writers themselves, contributed to her campaign, including poet Franciszka Voeltz who wrote custom-made “Poems-to-Go” for contributors. Alexandra Gologusova is now an Associate Editor of IMM Print