by Margarita Engle
Exhusted by war news
I watch the aquarium
instead of television
only to discover
that the lunar eyes
of captive fish
make me think
of children
caught between armies
this life of glass
imagined, a fragile
view of wishful peace.
Margarita Engle is a botanist and the Cuban-American author of three books about the island, most recently The Poet Slave of Cuba, a Biography of Juan Francisco Manzano (Henry Holt & Co., 2006). This historical novel-in-verse has received various honors, including awards from the International Reading Association, and the American Library Association. Short works appear in journals such as Atlanta Review, Caribbean Writer, and Hawai'i Pacific Review, as well as Poets Against the War, and other online journals. Recent literary journal honors include a Pushcart Prize nomination, and semi-finalist selection for the Nimrod/Hardman Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize. Margarita lives in central California, where she enjoys hiking and helping her husband with his volunteer work for wilderness search-and-rescue dog training programs.
