Close Talking: A Poetry Podcast

Episode #079 Gesture with Both Hands Tied - Marcelo Hernandez Castillo

10.11.2019 - By Cardboard Box Productions, Inc.Play

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Connor and Jack scour the gently unsettling poem "Gesture with Both Hands Tied" by Marcelo Hernandez Castillo. They discuss the poem's challenging lack of a stable speaker, negations of contradictions of negations, and a hypothetical play involving a character mostly not getting up from their chair.

You can find Marcelo Hernandez Castillo's work here: https://www.marcelohernandezcastillo.com/

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Gesture with Both Hands Tied

By: Marcelo Hernandez Castillo

I’m going to open the borders of my hunger

and call it a parade.

But I’m lying if I said I was hungry.

If dying required practice,

I could give up the conditions for being alone.

I undress in the sun and stare at it

until I can stand its brightness no longer.

Why is it always noon in my head?

I’m going to run outside and whisper,

or hold a gun and say bang,

or hold a gun and not do anything at all.

The lamps that wait inside me say

come, the gift is the practice,

the price is the door.

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