Elsa Frausto, who hails from Argentina, is a bilingual poet and translator. She's been active in the local literary community since the 1980's participating in readings (Beyond Baroque, art galleries and libraries), producing cultural programs in Spanish (KPFK radio), editor of Lahoja and la-luciérnaga.com, a member of Chuparosa Writers (Sunland-Tujunga), and coordinator and host of Camelback Readings (sponsored by Poets & Writers and the Friends of the S-T Library). Her work has appeared in many publications, among them Porte des Poetes (France), Hispanic L.A., Four Bilingual L.A. Poets, Spine Flower Blues, and in two chapbooks South of You and Night Birds, which she also edited. As Poet Laureate Of Sunland-Tujunga (2014-2017), she is active with the Village Poets, coordinates and hosts the monthly series “ Wide Open Reading” and exhibits the Poem of the Month at the Friends' bookstore.

Migrations

Their eyes see beyond

Blinded by the glare
of the sun
on white washed walls

when the red toenails of the girls
were curtains on a stage

They made it here
passed the test of pyramids
barriers ice ages
and found a sign that reads-
Nothing has changed

This is the world

Welcome

Whirlwind

I eat an early lunch at an unlikely place.
Why not? While shoppers walk in
(slow morning in their steps)
or walk out
(a grandmother with two children in the cart)
and somewhere between the humming
of the air conditioning and the voice
over the loudspeaker,
pieces of the day fall into place.
Stationery doesn't mingle with hosiery
and the toy department stays out
of health and beauty.
It could all fall apart.
Disassemble into what was before the Bang.
That it doesn't, is the settled whirlwind
in the parking lot.

Writers at Work Poem of the Month- May 2005

What the poem doesn't know

She approached him without hesitation.
She didn't know what I know while writing-
the man calling her had a gun
hidden under his coat.
She approached him radiant not with joy
but with sadness
and he looked at her beyond the death
where he was.
He took out the gun and said something
in such a hushed voice
that no one heard him.
She never knew what she heard,
whether the car that braked on the corner
or the humming of the voice itself.
Not even the poem knows.

published in Rain City Review

© 2016 Elsa Frausto