As poets, we are constantly editing, refining, rewriting to correct wrongs on and off the page. This is evident in the poem “In Which I Make Metaphors Out of Traumas,” by Valorie Ruiz, but in a real time. No, the poem is not animated, morphing before our eyes, but what Ruiz brilliant does is correct words via the strikeout, so the speaker deepens the emotional connection to the rendered image and action: 

Beg Pray he has the strength to pry apart my eyelids
There’s a memory blackhole stuck in my iris.
I speak tongues, but I’m always too busy climbing into myself mirrors

to find the song hidden in the mouths of knees—

Here are remains or evidence of a prior word serving both the speaker and the reader. For the speaker, this particular stanza marks the slow and painful journey one makes through any recovery. Like all the other stanzas, this singular, non-linear narrative tethers itself to the strike-out-edits as a means to stand and be empowered. Thus the vivid re-articulation not only becomes a recovered journey readers traverse upon over the course of the eight stanzas, but also a testament to the way language searches for a path within itself: “I’m trying to find the light the parable.” This wonderful poem continuously works to find language even in the event of the horrific or one’s escape from it.

— F. Douglas Brown, author of ICON, poetry prize judge

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In Which I Make Metaphors Out of Traumas

Palomas whisper of bible verses written on the hairs of their feet.
Why do I only seek Dios in the dark?
I’m shuttering these hands into a prayer 

Beg Pray he has the strength to pry apart my eyelids
There’s a memory blackhole stuck in my iris.
I speak tongues, but I’m always too busy climbing into myself mirrors

to find the song hidden in the mouths of knees— 

Too busy siphoning words milk from the next day.
I’m always milking something out of nothing.
This year’s cow has run dry. 

Why is a man always buried by snow, always seeking algo caliente
from bodies bottles and cigarillos?
How do I make light bulbs out of bruises coal? 

I tried to silence these traumas these visions
Tried to project a silent film— a woman a paloma is meant to be silent
their mouths, their wings, never making a flutter. 

While his hands his feathers are stuck in my throat.
And his lips his claws are sandpaper wearing my roughness away.
Did he leave bruises on my her skin to watch blood bloom?
Men are always forcing things to bloom. 

I’m trying to find the light the parable.
I spent hours walking the labyrinth of a snail’s shell—
I’m always making journeys out of nothing. 

I will tell you this: All men All birds break into the world by cracking
an eggshell with the blades of their being beak.

Maybe there is something
to this cracking.
I’m always making something out of nothing.