Poetry Friday: Persona by Joel M. Toledo

This week’s Poetry Friday is hosted by one of our blogging idols Book Aunt. We are in awe of her reviews and the work that she has done for kidlit. Do visit the round-up for today and take a moment as well to check out Book Aunt’s archive – it’s a veritable treasury of lovely book reviews.

** Before we share our Poetry offering today, I would like to invite everyone to join our 2012 Award-Winning-Book Reading Challenge. Click on the widget to be taken to the announcement post and sign up! Monthly book prizes would be given away. Open internationally. **

Now back to regular programming, we are privileged to have received more poems from our featured Poet, Professor Joel M. Toledo, for the rest of December. There is always something magical about receiving poems in your inbox – it just makes the day glow even brighter. The poem that I selected this week comes from Joel’s book The Long Lost Startle with the Introduction written by our Featured Poet for the months of September/October: Professor Gemino H. Abad.

This particular poem, entitled Persona spoke to me – perhaps because I am a psychologist and I discuss this particular concept in class. Over and above that, I also chose this poem because it reminded me of a photo I took of my daughter and which I also edited using Photoshop. December is her birthday month, and while the poem does not really match her ‘persona’ – I felt that it would be a fitting image to Joel M. Toledo’s poetry. I hope you enjoy both the poem and the image.

Persona by Joel M. Toledo

I am turning into some animal.

Notice the lines on my face extending to whiskers,

notice the hand becoming a paw. That keening sound beyond—

past the new wrecks of our bodies, down where the crickets

mutter their terrors, where the occasional tenor of frogs

disturbs the silence—that voice is mine. 

 

Pay no mind to the speaker: it is not me

digging, pulling at roots all day. The day is long

and the branches above sway unimportantly.

Why do you take so long as if

I don’t matter? Now you are calling me;

a strange tail swishes, instinctive.

 

And if I startle you, it is because I am speaking in the plural,

the humanly exclusive, shedding another point of view.

Suddenly I understand everything: the birds saying something

about sadness, the dogs discussing sunlight.

And now you toss me a bone? Foolish man,

 

the joke isn’t funny and my teeth are sharp.

Allow me to introduce you to my other selves.