The Bookstore
I WISH FRANCISCO FRANCO WOULD LOVE ME · GLORIA MINDOCK
$10.00
In her new book of poems I Wish Francisco Franco Would Love Me Gloria Mindock continues her examination of brutality and its toll on humanity. Here, her resurrected Francisco Franco leaps from her imagination to ridicule and condemn all dictators who believe they have the right to control and murder at will. Her poem “The Fruit Fly” reminds one of Osip Mandelstam’s famous takedown of Stalin. Satirical, powerful, lush and even at times displaying a certain beauty history can still carry, I Wish Francisco Franco Would Love Me will leave you thinking and changed.
Tim Suermondt, author of The World Doesn’t Know You
| Weight | 5 oz |
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Read excerpts
LOVE
Franco is aiming at my
reproductive system.
Apparently, he is a specialist
when it comes to love.
The parliament watches and hails
their approval.
The countries reaction appears
on the front page of the newspaper.
I gain strength.
Franco is decorated.
Another medal equipped and bolstered
hydroplaning my opposition.
An advance is made.
Conflict ahead.
A total war, complex and for
14 days, our love is eclipsed.
The Fruit Fly
The fruit fly landed on Franco’s nose and
would not move.
The skin was tasty.
The fly started eating and eating until
only bone was left.
Francisco could no longer smell the slaughter.
More fruit flies landed
on his skin and chowed
and chowded.
Bony man Franco disintegrating into
all the fruit flies mouths.
Spain was liberated!
CARMEN POLO, LADY NECKLACES, 2017
Franco would kill after watching a zarzuela
or really anything.
I imagine him shooting people to David Bowie’s song,
“Let’s Dance” as he danced around with a rifle
In his hand or to the gospel song,
“Swing Low Sweet Chariot.”
The woman he loved was disgusted
when he was stern and brusk.
The notes from her mouth were screechy.
Her pearls bright around her neck.
She liked to censor everyone around her,
to protect her man.
Even she could not escape being trapped in marriage.
She always appeared with Franco.
Blood affected every household.
It was never red, always black, dark and
stormy.
She kept going back for a daily dose.
She could not help it.
Fancy dresses and traveling. She never knew that
Franco was erasing her heart.
Her heart won’t recuperate the turmoil of the end.
Carmen isolated herself years later.
Did not want to hear about politics or Franco.
Poor thing. Who cares?
She should have been buried in a Mass grave. Nameless.
About the Author
Gloria Mindock is the founding editor of ˇCervená Barva Press and one of the USA editors for Levure Litteraire (France). She is the author of Whiteness of Bone (Glass Lyre Press, 2016), La Porțile Raiului (Ars Longa Press, Romania) translated into the Romanian by Flavia Cosma, Nothing Divine Here, Blood Soaked Dresses, and 3 chapbooks. Widely published in the USA and abroad, her poetry has been translated and published into the Romanian, Croatian, Serbian, Montenegrin, Spanish, Estonian, and French. Gloria was awarded the Ibbetson Street Press Lifetime Achievement Award, and was the recipient of the Allen Ginsberg Award for Community Service by the Newton Writing and Publishing Center. Gloria recently was published in Gargoyle, Constellations: A Journal of Poetry and Fiction, Muddy River Poetry Review, Unlikely Stories, and Nixes Mate Review and anthology. She is currently the Poet Laureate in Somerville, Massachusetts.
