Jean Valentine

27 April 1934 / Chicago, Ill

La Chalupa, The Boat

I am twenty,
drifting in la chalupa,
the blue boat painted with roses,
white lilies—
No, not drifting, I am poling
my way into my life. It seems
like another life:
There were the walls of the mind.
There were the cliffs of the mind,
There were the seven deaths,
and the seven bread-offerings—
Still, there was still
the little boat, the chalupa
you built once, slowly, in the yard, after school—
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