The Rose

 

Arancha Álvarez Fernández

December 2022

A woman was waiting, a man was searching for love.

The lady was lost, the boy was looking for a rose,

A rose which tells the way to connect their hope.

Pygmalion: An Alternative Ending

 

Arancha Álvarez Fernández

December 2022

 

Liza: Here they are, Mr. Higgins, your reindeer gloves and a tie, chosen by myself as you requested.

Higgins: Brilliant, Eliza. I knew you were going to reconsider your behavior. I assume you have forgotten to apologize yourself but it is fine. I forgive your attitude and the horrible words you uttered yesterday.

Eliza exits the room, grumbling in a low voice.

(Several months later)

The Parlor-Maid: Madam, Eliza is here and demands to see you immediately.

Mrs. Higgins: Well, then ask her to come in.

The Parlor-Maid asks Eliza to enter the room.

Liza: (crying) Good morning, Mrs. Higgins. I am sorry to bother you by breaking this terrible news to you. I don’t know how to start telling you this.

Mrs. Higgins: What happened?, dear Eliza, I am getting worried!

Eliza: It is about Mr. Higgins. He...he... He has turned up dead in his bedroom this morning.

Mrs. Higgins sits on her Elizabethan chair and starts crying.

(In the funeral)

Freddy: I have taken care of everything. You do not have to worry about anything that happened in that bedroom that morning.

Liza: Thank you, Freddy. I am sorry for involving you in this situation but he deserved it. He underestimated me!

 

Miguel Espina Ruiz de la Peña

28 October, 2022                                            

 

THE TREASURE

 

The first day of the year in London meant a lot for Mike Adams. He was very nervous about going to Westminster Abbey with his parents. He loved the monument because he had learnt a lot of the monument’s history at school. Mike was an interested boy because every place he visited gave him knowledge that he could share with his classmates. While he and his family were inside the Abbey, being interested in the most valuable objects, suddenly, Mike saw a small object on the floor. An hour later, when they returned home, the boy searched for information about the object: it was a gold and valuable coin. His little brother, Sam, was as interested as him and he saw his brother with the object. He asked Mike: “Oh, that’s incredible, can you show it to me, please?” Mike was uncomfortable at that moment because he didn’t want to share things with anybody. Then, his brother added: “I will tell our mom that you have this object unless you show it to me”. They had to go to school and Mike took the object with him. Later, his Maths teacher caught him red-handed with his treasure and called his father. From this moment onwards, Mike must do community services as a form of punishment.

Irene Fernández Vega 

November 2022

The trees that give the air we breathe are green.

                  

The rain we feel is key for them to breathe.

 

  Claudia Fernández-Nespral Huerta

                                                                                                                October 2022

 

 

 

                                                           PEARLS

 

Winter evenings had never been her cup of tea. When rain started to patter outside the window, she would play that vinyl, huge-sized and old-fashioned, containing those slow jazz melodies that got on my nerves. In fact, that was undoubtedly the main reason why she enjoyed them that much.

I accurately recall how she used to look. Pale-skinned, thin, not taller than me and with blond hair that sparkled under the sunlight. She used to rest on her brown leather armchair at the back of our living-room, clenching a random magazine while softly singing the melody that was being played. She did not read them for real, the magazines. They were only props for her, just like the annoying soap operas broadcasted on TV or her empowered and challenging look were only indexes that allowed me to embrace her in my strong arms, to dance in front of her wide opened bright eyes, and to make her levitate over the floor, with no regards for the weather outside or the neighbours’ complaints.

Certainly, that day was different. It was evening, and it was winter, a cold winter evening as the past ones, but “the eye of the sky,” as she used to say, did not pour rain but weapons. I remember her face, attached to the glass of the window, even paler, enlightened by the chandelier of our hall, while the TV set was showing men in military uniforms. The rest of the rooms were covered in darkness. I remember that day, one of the last ones. She prayed on her knees, facing the Christian cross over our bed, waiting with anxiety for my arrival. Indeed, I knocked on the door, and I embraced her as I had done every single day. I kissed her on her lips as well, and I made her a possible last gift; a necklace made of pearls that were not brighter than her wet charming eyes. “Let our essence be kept within it,” I whispered to her. But instead of letting the anguish flourish she cut the thread of the pearl necklace, took one of the pearls and dropped it into the pocket of my overcoat.

Indeed, duty ended up calling me. War was claiming every single man in the nation to fight on the front. After the call of the draft office, the scarce drops my eyes let go in loneliness, and her blessings, I got far away from home. In the following months I felt exhausted, starved up and a wretch, but never felt lonely because I had the pearl. Her smile remained immortalized in that sparkling tiny sphere.

Almost a year after, when a timid sun arose among the white clouds, I was allowed to return to my wife. As my path was being enlightened, I commenced to clench the pearl with the strength that I still had reserved for her. But instead of my flat, what I found was a demolished structure, fallen but still warm.

Suddenly, an old man who seemed familiar to me approached and hugged me after saying: “May she rest in peace. A missile collided against the building some weeks ago.” I immediately gazed at that pearly sphere and believed I saw her reflection on it. Since that moment I have not separated from the pearl, although it helps me dive into her turquoise eyes over and over again.

I am a Slavic man, now a foreigner that carries no suitcase. I am a man who has only a pearl in his pocket. I am a man who once imagined his death and left a necklace in his memory. I tried to seek her happiness, I strived to satiate her greed, but I did not realize that something as bright as a pearl can only resemble her eyes.

 

 

 

 

 

Welcome to the Class of 2022-2023

Dear Class of 2022-2023,

It is for me a pleasure to welcome you to the University of Oviedo and, in particular, to the Humanities Campus. It is always a pleasure to meet new students and to see so much potential in each new group. But this year the pleasure is even more intense than in the past, because after two years of having online classes and wearing facemasks when in-person classes were resumed, having the chance of seeing you, actually seeing your faces, makes me undescribably happy. 

I hope you'll enjoy your classes and will learn a lot. We--the older generations--need you to do your best, as in just a few years you'll be "out there," in charge of running the world, which you'll no doubt turn into a better place. We're counting on you!!!

But before that, I want to challenge you to a less daunting task. Will you dare to write a few poetic lines? You may choose to write a rhyming couplet with no particular meter or a couple of iambic pentameters with or without rhyme. Who will take the challenge? 

I'm looking forward to reading your lines!

Best wishes,

Carolina

P.S. By the way, I wrote my own lines while thinking of the over-reachers we've been discussing in class and the plums in William Carlos Williams's poem "This Is Just To Say", remember?

Here they go:

"Fruit from Paradise"

The boldest dream may seem within your reach.

The fruit you wish may too. So grab the peach!

Welcome to UniOvi!!!

Dear Class of 2020-2021,

It's a pleasure to have you here! Despite the unusual circumstances we are going through, you must know that your LITIN teachers are delighted to have you on Campus, and that we'll do our best to ensure that you have an excellent education and a good college experience. 

In the LITIN course we are going to try and teach you the basics about how to analyze literary texts. We also want you to try your hand at writing--because we always learn better when we try our hands at doing things ourselves, don't you agree?

So we'd love you to write poems or short short stories and share them with the whole group on this course blog. But on one condition: that your texts deal with the pandemic, how it's affected you personally or someone close to you, or how it's affecting the world, if that is what you prefer to focus on.

As an example of what we're asking you to contribute, I'm copying below a poem entitled "Harbour" by Black British author Grace Nichols. Hope you like her poem, and hope we'll soon have the chance to read YOUR contributions to the blog!

All the best,

Carolina Fernández

“Harbour”    (Grace Nichols, May 2020)

 

When it’s all over and hopefully it will be over,

I’ll probably look back and miss

this strange web of our togetherness –

 

The impromptu arias at windows

and balconies, the orchestras of pots

and pans and hands beating a metronome

 

Of gratitude to keep airborne

the spirits of our nurses, doctors,

all our care-workers –

 

The live streaming of ballet dancers

pirouetting trickily around their children,

now like everyone at home –

 

All the WhatsApp calls and video links

from friends and relatives, my daughters’ faces

surfacing on the small sky of my mobile –

 

Yes, the virtual world can console.

But watch how easily I’ll trade it -

for the simple harbour of a hug.

 

This poem is taken from Carol Ann Duffy and Manchester Metropolitan University’s poetry project during the Coronavirus, “WRITE where we are NOW.”

 

Follow this link for more information and poems: https://www.mmu.ac.uk/write/

 

“Poetry can provide an opportunity for reflection and inspiration in these challenging times, as well as creating a living record of what is happening as seen through poets’ eyes.”