The Academi Cardiff International Poetry Competition

Runner-up - Elisa Pulido

Elisa Pulido was born in San Bernardino, California.  She currently resides in San Juan Capistrano, California and is a founder and organizer of the Casa Romantica Reading series in San Clemente.  She holds an MFA in Writing from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Elisa has lived in Spain, England, and Switzerland.  While living in England she was fortunate enough to be a poetry student of Stephen Smith’s through the University of Surrey at Guilford, and was a member of Octavo poets in Surrey.  Her poems have appeared in The New Welsh Review, Interchange, The North American Review, River Styx, The Ledge, Another Chicago Magazine, and Margie: The Journal of American Poetry.

Elko County
                                Hoy se casó mi novia.
                                  Pasará la noche mejor que yo
                                           —Anonymous carving by a Basque
                                                               Sheepherder in Nevada—

Children in the Old Country kiss fallen bread crusts,
toss them into the air and shout  for the birds of heaven!
When I left Nafarroa, you kissed me good-bye, waved
me off to sea, married my elder brother.  This son with
no inheritance washed ashore in Nevada,
was given a carbine, a yellow dog, one biting burro
and the care of three thousand sheep–
my only companions for months.

                                                       I have carved you
onto a trunk of a smooth aspen.  Pale skin, dark hair.
When I gave you eyes, you started, finding yourself
in the company of sheepherder putas.  It is only that men,
who visit a town once a year, will afterwards pass
their blades over white bark, remembering the thighs
of a favorite.

                          Though you did not wait for me, I dream
of you faithfully, am willing share my inheritance
with you–aspen groves, fields of lamb’s quarter, pine seas,
the singing of coyotes, crickets.  I am rich in quail,
sage hens, stars–am Lord of this castle, subject
only to mosquitoes in summer.