the louderARTS Project

Diana Marie Delgado

Diana Marie Delgado grew up in Southern California and received her BA from the University of California, Riverside. She is the author of the chapbook, Holding Nothing Like It’s Something. Her poems have appeared in Border Senses, The Laurel Review, The North American Review, CRATE, and Lorraine and James. She is the winner of the 2005 James Phelan Award in Poetry for her manuscript in-progress, The Doll Age. Currently, she is finishing her MFA in Poetry at Columbia University in New York City.

Wolf

Wolf can’t walk so he sends me
to the liquor store for Sisco
and two loose cigarettes.
Babe, he yells after me

make sure it’s the pink one,
orange doesn’t give a good buzz.
I look up and the sun is flashing,
the pavement grain aglitter.

Earlier, he lifted the cushion
of his chair to show me a gun
wrapped in shoeshine rags.
Just in case—he said, pointing the gun

toward the cawing field across the street.
Weeks had passed since the fire
but the birds still circled, searching
for something to land on.

© Diana Marie Delgado