By Sandra Newton
I know now that I was meant to love and lose,
To burn with passion that devours itself
Much like a fire swallowing
The air and flashing with delight
The serpent greedily gulping
Its own tail
The fox that chews off its foot,
Caught in a rusty iron trap.
Love so huge, so terrible, it
Disappears
Not fading softly
But disintegrating—
Sand blown by the wind,
Or exploded fragments
Of the sparkling nova in a winter sky.
And there is no time for regret,
For doubt or hesitation:
A mote in my eye is rubbed out,
An itch in my nose is scratched,
Dry lips are briefly licked.
Everything is subject to the instant
And changes, is changed, will change
In the moment.
Such love is glimpsed
In dreams.
Then I wake.
Sandra Salinas Newton is a Filipina-American professor emeritus of English. Her published works include introductory texts, fiction, and arts reviews. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Apricity Magazine, Brushfire, Cerasus, Courtship of Winds, Decadent Review, Ekphrastic Review, ellipsis…literature & art, Etched Onyx. Evening Street Review, Exchanges, Fauxmoir, Hawaii Pacific Review, Hyacinth Review, Library Love Letter, Loch Raven Review, Midwest Quarterly, Multiplicity, Native Skin, Neologism Poetry Journal, New Note Poetry, Oberon Poetry Journal 2021, OPEN: Journal of Arts and Letters, The Poeming Pigeon, Poetic Sun, Ponder Review, Provenance, Slab, Vita Brevis Press, Vultures and Doves, The Woolf, Wrath-Bearing Tree, and Young Ravens Literary Review. She was recently one of four finalists in the 2022 Writers’ League of Texas Manuscript Contest (Historical Fiction category). Her chapbook ‘Dead Men Tell Such Tales’ was a finalist in Kallisto-Gaia Press Saguaro Prize in 2022. She earned her B.A. from The City College of New York, her M.A. from Hunter College, and her Ph.D. from Fordham University.
