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      October 20, 2016CalendarioDevon Balwit

      Photograph: “They All Slept Here” by Ilenia Pezzaniti. “Calendario” was written by Devon Balwit for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, September 2016, and selected by Pezzaniti as the Artist’s Choice winner.
      They said they would come back,
      but they didn’t.
       
      Sometimes, their money comes,
      but never as much as abuela wishes.
       
      I ask the umbrella ladies about el norte,
      but they always answer with unfriendly backs.
       
      The TV could tell me,
      but Jorge only half-fixed it.
       
      Abuela wants me to change their sheets,
      but the fallen plaster is my calendar.
       
      Sometimes, I hear their voices in the night,
      but it’s just more ceiling dust adding to the weeks.

      Comment from the artist, Ilenia Pezzaniti

      “’Calendario’ feels. There’s a slow rise and burn of my skin every time I read it. There’s a truth in its fiction, a grace in its vision. So much complexity put simply, with punches that deliver flowers. It does not tell, it shows; it lays on the bed next to me and understands. The emotion and tone is just right, walking the line between the hope and hopelessness I felt the day I stood in that room: a stagnant sadness coupled with children’s laughter, a depression but making the best of it, a hard worked life and then abandoning all of it in a rush, saying you’ll return but knowing that’s a lie. It inspires. I feel close to this poet. ‘… but they always answer with unfriendly backs,’ ‘but the fallen plaster is my calendar,’—brilliant.”

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