Angela Narciso Torres

PANTOUM WITH LINES FROM D.H. LAWRENCE

Tell me what you think, exactly.
We look at each other across the grave,
sunlight being really firelight.
We are only sad for a little while.

We look at each other across the grave.
It is cruel to go back into the past.
We are only sad for a little while.
At the bottom one knows the eternal things.

Is it cruel to go back into the past?
I want to begin all over again.
At the bottom one knows the eternal things.
This cursed war will go on forever.

I want to begin all over again.
Is sunlight really firelight?
Will this cursed war go on forever?
Tell me what you think, exactly.


The lines in this cento-pantoum are taken from D.H. Lawrence, Selected Letters (Penguin Books, England, 1978). 

Angela Narciso Torres is the author of Blood Orange (Willow Books Literature Award for Poetry), To the Bone (Sundress Publications, 2020) and What Happens Is Neither (Four Way Books, 2021). Recent work appears in POETRY, Missouri Review, and Cortland Review. A graduate of Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers and Harvard Graduate School of Education, Angela has received fellowships from Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Illinois Arts Council, and Ragdale Foundation. She serves as a senior and reviews editor for RHINO Poetry. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Manila, she resides in Southern California.