Bio
Rosa Arlotto graduated from UofT Erindale College in languages. She is the author of the novel “The Maestro and Margherita” on e-book, publisher: R. L. Hartley. The novel is also available in paperback on Lulu. Rosa has also published two books of poetry, “Record of a Modern Heart” and “Flower of Poison,” by Publish America. Her works can often be found in the online quarterly magazine Literary Heist. She is currently one of the organizers of the Artbar Poetry reading Series.
Trigger Warning
Does anything exist today
Which is older than 30 years ago?
Our memories our oblivions:
The umbilical cord of indigenous women
From lower down is on the news again.
The shadows daughters of the night
The sensitive flowers
With their delicate horror
Their assaying disgust
Of those whose ravishment has lasted so long
Swelled within huge crevices
Remain voiceless, sold out, unlawful.
We should search for them, their histories
To gather them.
These piers of neglect
Are our sisters
Our separated ones
Our wordless ones
Crossed beyond.
We should spend time building “an enclosed pasture”
Where the shadows
The shades
Which was them
May turn at last
To a life imagined perhaps
A free spirited ambition
A legalized trade
A lawful society protecting them
From beginning to end.
Since the irrational
“because I say so”
Starts here
And because it might be something perverse for some
And yet
I am not all
Alone here
And there is no easy definition of freedom
I ask
And I cannot know
Isn’t it true that in this so called civilized city of ours
Where the night is so attractive to us
And the going so easy
And speaking not as easily
As it might ordinarily imply
We have already passed this phase of history?
To preserve freedom for all
Especially in an increasing barbarous and brutal world
Is a challenge
Yet I do not think of us as children.