patrick Cabello hansel

Patrick Cabello Hansel is a poet and retired Lutheran pastor, who served for 35 years in urban, bilingual congregations in the Bronx, Philadelphia, and Minneapolis. His poetry collections are The Devouring Land (Main Street Rag Publishing), Quitting Time (Atmosphere Press), and Breathing in Minneapolis (Finishing Line Press), which deals with the challenges that city faced in the past three years. He has published poems and prose in over 85 journals and won awards from the Loft Literary Center and MN State Arts Board. He is currently working on a novel, as well as serializing his second novella in a local newspaper. His website is www.artecabellohansel.com.

It Had Ceased to Be With Sarah After the Manner of Women

No candlestick. No cool

cloth over my head at the heat

of the day. Still the sifting,

the stirring, the pounding

of the heal of my hand on

the masa to make the loaves.

Bread that does not fill.

Cavern ever empty, only a sore

like a cistern dripping water.

I kept a chest with precious

stones gathered on our journeys:

turquoise, lapis lazuli,

a stinging insect caught in amber.

Bones, now. Splinters of limbs

that never grew. Yes, I laughed.

The laugh of bitterness wearied

by holding sorrows at arm’s lengths

all these barren years. My time

now reduced to “after”: after

I have grown old; after my husband

is good as dead, shall I have pleasure?

Shall we? I have a choice to make

with my one, tried body: I can rise

up in joy, I can grasp this promise

one more season; or I can fold

my flesh into a rock. I can

lie down. I can cease.

Read more of Patrick’s work in Solum Journal Volume IV.