The "real life bride" of Lorca's
Blood wedding dies an old woman,
the newspaper reports.
Not very attractive, lame
from childhood accident,
she ran off with her cousin
the eve of her wedding.
Attacked on the road with shotgun
the cousin was killed;
she survived. But Lorca
takes almost nothing
from this sordid account.
The journalist's realm is fact--
mine, like Lorca's, is fiction,
whether drama, poem, or novel.
Paca, this woman, is not in fact
the bride of the play,
nor is the dead cousin Lorca's
"Leonardo" nor the cousin's mule
Leonardo's mythic horse.
Absent from "real life" accounts
are the bridegroom's fierce mother
and her fear of knives,
her hunger for revenge
for her husband and son, slain
by Leonardo's kin. How then,
is Lorca's play not a work of fiction?
What idiot wants to see it as "real life" in disguise?
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