Sandra Cisneros Poems (Amazing Poem Collection)

Sandra Cisneros poems collections include Bad Boys, My Wicked, Wicked Ways, The Rodrigo Poem, and Loose Woman. She resides in Mexico’s San Miguel de Allende.

Sandra Cisneros Poems

The only daughter in a family of six sons, poet, novelist, essayist, short story writer, and children’s author Sandra Cisneros was born in Chicago, Illinois, and is popular for her Sandra Cisneros poems.

The family frequently relocated between Chicago and Mexico when she was a child. At Loyola University in Chicago, Cisneros received a BA, and at the University of Iowa, she received an MFA.

1. Dulzura

Make love to me in Spanish.
Not with that other tongue.
I want you juntito a mi,
tender like the language
crooned to babies.
I want to be that
lullabied, mi bien
querido, that loved.

I want you inside
the mouth of my heart,
inside the harp of my wrists,
the sweet meat of the mango,
in the gold that dangles
from my ears and neck.

Say my name. Say it.
The way it’s supposed to be said.
I want to know that I knew you
even before I knew you.

2. Tú Que Sabes de Amor

You come from that country
where the bitter is more bitter
and the sweet, sweeter.

You come from that town split
down the center life a cleft lip.
You come from the world
with a river running through it.
The dead. The living.
The river Styx.

You come from the twin Laredos.
Where the world was twice-named and
nopalitos flower like a ripe ranchera.
Ay corazón, ¿tú que sabes de amor?

No wonder your heart is filled
with mil peso notes and jacaranda.
No wonder the clouds laugh each
time they cross without papers.

I know who you are.
You come from that county
where the bitter is more bitter
and the sweet, sweeter.

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3. Bay Poem from Berkeley

Mornings I still
reach for you before
opening my eyes.

An antique habit from
last summer when we pulled
each other into the heat of groin
and belly, slept with an arm
around the other.

The Texas sun was like that.
Like a body asleep beside you.

But when I open my eyes
to the flannel and down,
mist at the window and blue
light from the bay, I remember
where I am.

This weight
on the other side of the bed
is only books, not you. What
I said I loved more than you.
True.

Though these mornings
I wish books loved back.

4. Loose Woman

They say I’m a beast.
And feast on it. When all along
I thought that’s what a woman was.

They say I’m a bitch.
Or witch. I’ve claimed
the same and never winced.

They say I’m a macha, hell on wheels,
viva-la-vulva, fire and brimstone,
man-hating, devastating,
boogey-woman lesbian.
Not necessarily,
but I like the compliment.

The mob arrives with stones and sticks
to maim and lame and do me in.
All the same, when I open my mouth,
they wobble like gin.

Diamonds and pearls
tumble from my tongue.
Or toads and serpents.
Depending on the mood I’m in.

I like the itch I provoke.
The rustle of rumor
like crinoline.

I am the woman of myth and bullshit.
(True. I authored some of it.)
I built my little house of ill repute.
Brick by brick. Labored,
loved and masoned it.

I live like so.
Heart as sail, ballast, rudder, bow.
Rowdy. Indulgent to excess.
My sin and success–
I think of me to gluttony.

By all accounts I am
a danger to society.
I’m Pancha Villa.
I break laws,
upset the natural order,
anguish the Pope and make fathers cry.
I am beyond the jaw of law.
I’m la desperada, most-wanted public enemy.
My happy picture grinning from the wall.

I strike terror among the men.
I can’t be bothered what they think.
¡Que se vayan a la ching chang chong!
For this, the cross, the calvary.
In other words, I’m anarchy.

I’m an aim-well,
shoot-sharp,
sharp-tongued,
sharp-thinking,
fast-speaking,
foot-loose,
loose-tongued,
let-loose,
woman-on-the-loose
loose woman.
Beware, honey.

I’m Bitch. Beast. Macha.
¡Wáchale!
Ping! Ping! Ping!
I break things.

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5. You Called Me Corazón

That was enough
for me to forgive you.
To spirit a tiger
from its cell.

Called me corazón
in that instant before
I let go the phone
back to its cradle.

Your voice small.
Heat of your eyes,
how I would’ve placed
my mouth on each.

Said corazón
and the word blazed
like a branch of jacaranda.

6. Old Maids

My cousins and I,
we don’t marry.
We’re too old
by Mexican standards.

And the relatives
have long suspected
we can’t anymore
in white.

My cousins and I,
we’re all old
maids at thirty.

Who won’t dress children,
and never saints–
though we undress them.

The aunts,
they’ve given up on us.
No longer nudge–You’re next.

Instead–
What happened in your childhood?
What left you all mean teens?
Who hurt you, honey?

But we’ve studied
marriages too long–

Aunt Ariadne,
Tia Vashti,
Comadre Penelope,
querida Malintzin,
Senora Pumpkin Shell–

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7. Amorcito Corazón

Ya no eres
mi amorcito
¿verdad?

ya lo supe.
ya lo sé.

Fuiste
y ya no eres.
Fuimos
y se acabó.

¿Cómo les diría?
¿Cómo se explica?

Te conocí
¿y ahora?

no.

8. Mexican in France

He says he likes Mexico.
Especially all that history.
That’s what I understand
although my French
is not that good.

And wants to talk
about U.S. racism.
It’s not often he meets
Mexicans in the south of France.

He remembers
a Mexican Marlon Brando once
on French tv.

How, in westerns,
the Mexicans are always
the bad guys. And–

Is it true
all Mexicans
carry knives?

I laugh.
–Lucky for you
I’m not carrying my knife
today.

He laughs too.
–I think
the knife you carry
is abstract.

9. You Bring Out the Mexican in Me

You bring out the Mexican in me.
The hunkered thick dark spiral.
The core of a heart howl.
The bitter bile.
The tequila lagrímas on Saturday all
through next weekend Sunday.
You are the one I’d let go the other loves for,
surrender my one-woman house.
Allow you red wine in bed,
even with my vintage lace linens.
Maybe. Maybe.

For you.

You bring out the Dolores del Río in me.
The Mexican spitfire in me.
The raw navajas, glint and passion in me.
The raise Cain and dance with the rooster-footed devil in me.
The spangled sequin in me.
The eagle and serpent in me.
The mariachi trumpets of the blood in me.
The Aztec love of war in me.
The fierce obsidian of the tongue in me.
the berrinchuda, bien-cabrona in me.
The Pandora’s curiosity in me.
The pre-Columbian death and destruction in me.
The rainforest disaster, nuclear threat in me.
The fear of fascists in me.
Yes, you do. Yes, you do.

You bring out the colonizer in me.
The holocaust of desire in me.
The Mexico City ’85 earthquake in me.
The Popocatepetl/Ixtaccíhuatl in me.
The tidal wave of recession in me.
The Agustín Lara hopeless romantic in me.
The barbacoa taquitos on Sunday in me.
The cover the mirrors with cloth in me.

Sweet twin. My wicked other,
I am the memory that circles your bed nights,
that tugs you taut as moon tugs ocean.
I claim you all mine,
arrogant as Manifest Destiny.
I want to rattle and rent you in two.
I want to defile you and raise hell.
I want to pull out the kitchen knives,
dull and sharp, and whisk the air with crosses.
Me sacas lo mexicana en mi,
like it or not, honey.

You bring out the Uled-Nayl in me.
The stand-back-white-bitch in me.
The switchblade in the boot in me.
The Acapulco cliff diver in me.
The Flecha Roja mountain disaster in me.
The dengue fever in me.
The ¡Alarma! murderess in me.
I could kill in the name of you and think
it worth it. Brandish a fork and terrorize rivals,
female and male, who loiter and look at you,
languid in your light. Oh,

I am evil. I am the filth goddess Tlazoltéotl.
I am the swallower of sins.
The lust goddesss without guilt.
The delicious debauchery. You bring out
the primordial exquisiteness in me.
The nasty obsession in me.
The corporal and venial sin in me.
the original transgression in me.

Red ocher. Yellow ocher. Indigo. Cochineal.
Piñón. Copal. Sweetgrass. Myrrh.
All you saints, blessed and terrible,
Virgen de Guadalupe, diosa Coatlicue,
I invoke you.

Quiero ser tuya. Only yours. Only you.
Quiero amarte. Atarte. Amarrarte.
Love the way a Mexican woman loves. Let
me show you. Love the only way I know how.

Sandra Cisneros has lectured at a variety of schools and institutions, including the Universities of California, Michigan, and New Mexico. She resides in Mexico’s San Miguel de Allende.

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Sandra Cisneros Poems (Amazing Poem Collection)