Welcome to Verdugo Online's Poet's Corner featuring Tujunga's:

Elsa Frausto


 

I was born in Argentina and have lived in Tujunga for nearly ten years. I am beginning to call it home. Share my life with four guys and a cat. I studied Slavic Studies at UCLA but in my own writing, Spanish and English hold a closer place. In fact, I discovered poetry when I started learning English and the discovery hasn't left me yet. I dedicate these poems to my Chuparosa friends and our Wednesday night meetings.
 

For Ivan when he was five years old

My faith stops here.
Your eyelids closed to me
open to sleep, I watch
while the touch
of my fingers on your skin
makes a ripple on the ocean.

Night offers questions mirrored in the moon.
The gasp is wide.
A sigh is not enough.
The questions change. Which mine?
To hold, undo and bite, undo and hold.
If God is not a tickle in my side
then pity is the true name I hold.

Your sleeping face is the heaven
 I inhabit.
Your measured breath the width of dreams
I weave.
Faith is a question left unanswered.
A coin deep in a pocket I seldom use.

*********
Ivan's Words seven years later

Big sigh...
  Is life hard on you?
Yeah, I sent a letter to life,
had to pay shipping and handling.
A new one'll be delivered
in about two weeks.


 
 

 
 
 
For lack of a real winter
I take a walk
In Echo Park.
Palm trees never 
lose their fans,
erect signposts
of the seasons.
The water of the lake
meets the dancing fog
and morning
is that one single
boat
nestled in the middle.

********
Intransit

I walk
moon slides behind
palm trees
suspended breath
of sky
*******
Attempt to cross the world
eyes closed
Let music guide my steps
I carry the profile of mountains
drawn on my forehead
**********
Galapagos,
Turtle Island,
reads the child's shirt.

 Made in Sri Lanka,
 it illustrates an island so real
it's mythic,
then makes its way
through thrift shops
to a school
in the valley
where eyes pick it up
and begin the journey again.


 
 

Visit these sites of
Past Featured Poets:

Marlene Hitt, Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga
Shari Borders,  "Singing in Tongues"
George Raabe,  "Solving Fermet's Last Theorem"
Gen Krueger,  "With Jagged Light"