Barbara de la Cuesta

Rosamundo Barbara de la Cuesta

In this narrative prose poem, Priscilla, home health aide, college dropout, social activist, sets out to work on her bicycle at dawn. Passing the old woolen mill, she meditates on the city's history and her family's part in its founding. As she visits her clients in their apartments, the space shuttle Columbia orbits above, sending down messages, the mayor visits the Sunshine Club, a parachutist lands in Leary Field, an AA meeting takes place in the basement of the Italian Church... Evening comes. Priscilla feeds her children. Called back to work, she suffers a long-feared bicycle accident, is taken overnight to the hospital where she has some ecstatic and revelatory thoughts about her survival. Dawn comes, the shuttle lands.