Fall/Winter 2014



Mia Leonin

SELF PORTRAIT AS A GRAIN OF SAND

I am not the infant at the midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises,
machine gun fire shadows ricocheting off my alabaster forehead.

I am not the toddler bawling at a Pink concert, my eardrum-rattled wail,
flailing against the swell of screaming t-shirts.

I am not the three-legged dog who limped from the Mall of Americas
parking lot to Ocala, Florida.

I am not the person handing out thimblefuls of soup samples, in the shadow
of the North Tower at 8:45 a.m.

I am not the six-year old with my face five inches from a waiting room TV
that blares details of a mother who suffocated her baby daughter,

nor am I the baby daughter’s body stuffed into a suitcase
and buried in the backyard. 

I am the person who placed my cursor over the next story
and clicked.


Mia Leonin is the author of two books of poetry, Braid and Unraveling the Bed (Anhinga Press), and the memoir, Havana and Other Missing Fathers (University of Arizona Press). She teaches creative writing at the University of Miami.

 


 

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