"At the Prado, Age Eighteen," by Chloe Martinez (Poetry '09)

Chloe Martinez, a 2009 poetry alum, recently had two poems featured in TriQuarterly. Read an excerpt of “At the Prado, Age Eighteen” below:

At the Prado, Age Eighteen

When I finally got there let’s say it didn’t matter
that on the way over as I was crossing the street

a woman offered me flowers, and I didn’t buy,
and she hit me with them, shouting, and the light
changed and I fled; didn’t matter whether Madrid

felt cold and severe and rainy
or cold and magnificent and rainy;
made no difference, even, that on New Year’s Eve

I lost track of my friends
and wandered rain-slicked streets alone
because I was uninterested in a stranger’s

hands on me—call me a prude, whatever,
that’s how I felt that night…

“At the Prado, Age Eighteen,” by Chloe Martinez (Poetry ’09)