J. Estanislao Lopez
Reconsidering Plato’s Cave
My opinion?
Plato never
set foot
inside a cave.
Inside a cave,
there’s no
deception.
Only you
and your fear
of closure,
of what you
cannot see
and, so, cannot
predict. The slick,
unforgiving rock
could not be
more honest. It’s
the grass
that authors
our delusions,
bedding
the earth
as if
it were meant
to lie on
and not in.
In Praise of the Insects that Remain Hidden in the Grass
A wren fetches one last serving of insects
in the yard as dusk stirs competing appetites.
Some insects attempt to fly away
not knowing they’ve played themselves
straight into the wren’s mouth; others
stay hidden under damp knots of grass.
I rise from my chair, where I had been
making a meal of my regrets. I leave
the wet shelter of shame, spreading wings
of self-forgiveness. I mistake the blankness
of the air for freedom.
J. Estanislao Lopez
J. Estanislao Lopez is a Pushcart-nominated poet whose work has appeared in literary magazines such as The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Harvard Review Online, The Shallow Ends, and elsewhere. His poems have been anthologized in the Bedford Compact Introduction to Literature, 12th Ed. and in the forthcoming BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext. He holds an MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers and currently lives in Houston.