It was in a dream
in a low-light room
in a box of matches
from a pocket
It was a rapid friction
a flare of passion
reflected in dark eyes
It was in a dream
I sometimes tell myself
where nothing I touched
could touch me back
It was in my skin
in the evidence of
the scars, the burns,
the scratches
In a crying moment
in a chosen fashion
that a game of arms
struck like matches
in the beating heart
of a dream
pleasure & pain
are the same muscle.
Sparks
I wrote this poem in 1993. I was taking an Environmental Science class in college and it was so boring, and so long, that I would write poetry to help myself stay awake. It was inspired by a friend, and I was trying to write a poem from his perspective. This poem was originally published in the Garnet & Black Quarterly, 1994. Copyright Lupita Eyde.
Lupita Eyde-Tucker is a bilingual poet and translator raised in New Jersey and Guayaquil, Ecuador. She is the winner of the 2021 Unbound Book Festival Emerging Poet Award, the 2019 Betty Gabehart Prize, and in 2018 was selected as an AWP Writer to Writer Mentee by poet Maggie Smith. In 2022 her poetry manuscript, "Eucalyptus," was a finalist for the Andrés Montoya Prize from Letras Latinas. The manuscript explores her Sephardic Jewish ancestry and bi-cultural heritage.
Not Enough Poetry 