Gacela of the Bitter Root
Gacela of the Bitter Root - form Summary
Gacela’s Compact Lament
This poem is a short Spanish gacela: a compact, lyrical form that condenses emotion into repeated images and refrains. Its tight structure focuses on a central emblem—the "bitter root"—and frames an address to love as an adversary. The form’s brevity intensifies the poem’s ache and circularity, so images of wounds, terraces, and windows recur with abrupt shifts that create a haunting, songlike insistence rather than a narrative arc.
Read Complete AnalysesThere's a bitter root and a world of a thousand terraces. Not even the smallest hand shatters the gate of waters. Where are you going, where, where? There's a sky of a thousand windows - a battle of bruised bees - and there's a bitter root. Bitter. Sore on the sole of the foot, on the inside of the face, and sore in the cool trunk of the freshly cut night. Love, my enemy, bite on your bitter root!
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