Desamor

Do you have the aguante, the heart to fully give
to another human being?

You sense the friolento, the long-distance future,
stretching to the horizon,

and become a nagual, a holder of secrets
and longing for what is beyond.

And the cenzontle, a wise woman,
whispers encouragement in your ear:

‘Keep at it’, she says, ‘don’t give up.’
But you are tempted by the xoconostle,

a smooth apple calling to you
from a stranger’s orchard. You reach out to pluck it.

But will it be juicy and sweet
or desamor, rotten as the old fruit lying at your feet?

Kim M Russell, 13th May 2025

Image by Peter Neumann on Unsplash

It’s Tuesday Poetics at the dVerse Poets Pub, and we have a Spanish word prompt from our host, Dora, who has introduced me to a new poet and a new type of poem.

She says that “every language has its unique musical lilt and flow contained even in a single word as [she] found while hearing a poem made up of English and Spanish words, written by Mexican American writer Sandra Cisneros. Dora has given us some background to Cisneros, who is best known for her novel, The House on Mango Street (1984). 

In her poem, ‘I Have No Word in English For’, Cisneros lists twenty-five words dictionary-like but non-alphabetically, yet seemingly objectively, with the person in the poem painting each definition with a “keenly personal shade of meaning”. Dora has given an example of this to clarify.

Our challenge is to write poems on any theme, either incorporating one (or more) of the italicized Spanish words from the Cisneros poem in original poems, being sure to look them up to get objective definitions and compare them to Cisneros’s poeticism before trying them out on our own tongues; or use in our poems familiar words or phrases from a language other than English, which we feel express distinctively peculiar thoughts or emotions. Whichever option we choose, we must provide the meanings.

I chose:
Desamor heartbreak
Aguante endurance
Nagual sorceror, wizard or transforming witch / shape shifter
Cenzontle mockingbird
Friolenta/o sensitive to cold / cold-blooded
Xoconostle sour prickly pear cactus fruit

26 thoughts on “Desamor”

    1. Thank you, Björn. I was tempted to use words from a language with which I’m more familiar, but then decided to take words from the Cisnero poem and try to emulate her poem. But the poem took a path of its own!

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  2. Absolutely devoured this, Kim! I love your use of the Spanish to induce a mystic mood, a calling at first toward becoming “a nagual, a holder of secrets/and longing for what is beyond,” then progressing towards a tale as old as time. Will it be different this time?

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  8. Deftly done, Kim!

    And yes, bottle trees are a thing in the southern US. When I lived in San Antonio, Texas is when I first saw them. They are said to trap wandering or negative spirits inside the glass.

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  9. So many layers of language – and of soul – are here, Kim. I found your glosssary at the end very useful and your poem moved me. What occured to me was a possible etymological link between:

    aguante and nagual

    If agua means water, then perhaps endurance can have a flowing aspect to it, as also can that wise spirit-guardian. Maybe we women can swim in the vast ocean safely after all.

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  10. Your poem reminded me of Carlos Castenada with its Nagual, sense of brooding future and temptations of fruit, a great response to the prompt Kim…

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