Gloria Mindock is a poet who finds the cores of innocence in the midst of human atrocities. Her poetry can be brash and bleak, full of burning and broken bones; then she will write about possums
I held them in my world
For just a little while
Another poem is about a tough armadillo smoking a cigarette and driving down to Mexico, “talking about the dreams not reached.” Mindock is all about the price of dreams, what we give away for what isn’t worth it.
My favorite poem begins:
The little boy banged his drum loudly
Day and night
How could his hands and arms
Not get tired?
Sometimes they would sing and dance
With the drumming
They become transfixed by the playing, wondering what it’s about, where this power came, is the boy a god, and:
One day the drumming stopped
War broke out
Because they questioned the gift
For all this she has a love of color and shadow, and the play of visual rhythms:
Darkness covers my eyes
I play hide and seek
With black shadows, light
Mindock traces atrocities back to death rituals and tribal child sacrifices, the mythic dimensions of primal human experience, lightened with fables of animals and children where the folly and crimes become poetic, and instructive in a story book kind of way.
Waterwheel Poetry 