Wrong Turn
There’s a dead cat
sprawled on the side of the road.
No official burial ceremony
but woodchips and straw
spread by snakes with a soul.
The sky will be cobalt soon
now it’s peach.
Is there a blueprint for melancholy?
I wish I turned the cat to the palm trees.
No one should have to face their killer
even eyes closed.
I need to talk to god
more—I wish I had back there
made a list of things to pray for.
I’ve been scared
of a stroke, not mine, my parents’
and all the cats and their empty
funerals fluctuating
between being at peace—alone,
the cat didn’t know
a wrong turn from early death.
Am I prey wherever I go?
They never told us the risk in play.
Kids cracking their heads open,
lovers wanting to blend into each other.
I remember exquisite teen dreams
of making art beneath the mantle.
Painting just wings, living on the floor
Venetian style. So rich
with periwinkle and lavender.
You couldn’t tell the difference
if they were wrapped in the trunk of a car.
I’d go through the jungle for that feeling.
I try, listening to the cold morning.
This is where I salivate
—I cannot stop, like a child
coming to terms
with hundreds of old drawings
skipping hot pink and depicting feet
small enough
to fit in the palms of my hands.
I end up peeling
my hands, squeezing into tingles.
I almost died that way once.
The brakes didn’t work in the silver van.
We bent our bodies
in, surprisingly
calm, ready? To wake up in the dark
sliding from one side to the next.
My eyes drawn like a tarot card
to the intersection, only grazing.
My pupils and little fists
turned to balls.
They all looked so similar—
swollen, red, laughing, the veins.
I thought I started to disappear.
Mini-interview with Paula Gil-Ordoñez Gomez
HFR: Can you share a moment that has shaped you as a writer (or continues to)?
PGG: In my first workshop with Anthony Thomas Lombardi, a poet who has become a great mentor of mine, he taught me that writing poetry is community. The whole idea of the solitary writer who goes to the woods and produces the next great American novel is a myth. I’ve witnessed a gross romanticization of the lonely writer—the recluse whose creativity emerges only in silence, driven by genius and madness no one else could ever understand. That’s silly and honestly will get you nowhere. I want to be understood, to be seen, to be guided, and not only after the words are written on the page, but before and during too. We cannot write without finding our people, we cannot be truthful without them, we cannot be good without them. As Anthony writes in an interview in Dead End Zine, “Poetry for the most part is talking to our communities whether they’re in the past, in the present … we are writing the lessons of our ancestors and our family, of our beloveds.”
HFR: What are you reading?
Severance by Ling Ma, Four Reincarnations by Max Ritvo, and an English-Spanish poetry anthology with works from the 17th century to the present day.
HFR: Can you tell us what prompted “Wrong Turn”?
PGG: The summer before I wrote this poem I had been visiting family in Mallorca, Spain, when I went for a bike ride to the beach, and on my way saw a dead cat on the side of the road. Witnessing roadkill feels especially sad because it’s such unnatural, man-made, unexpected death. Cats are also unlikely roadkill, and it was an especially stark contrast to the idyllic setting I was in. Then I started thinking about humans as unlikely roadkill, and the implications of unexpected death for us and our beloveds. When I got to the beach, I pulled out my journal and jotted down the image.
Later in the fall, I took a workshop with Anthony grounded in community consciousness. We each maintained a daily dream journal as morning pages, tracing the subconscious, and an image journal of observations and honestly any conversations I could eavesdrop on. After a few weeks into workshop, we exchanged journals and they became the foundational texts on which our poems were based. The inspiration for “Wrong Turn” came from the dream descriptions of a writer who, being a painter, gave me the opportunity to play with vivid colors—a favorite aspect of this poem. Her dream of a fatal car crash triggered my memory of being in a car where the brakes stopped working and for a few seconds I was in free fall. It brought to mind the cat on the side of the road—I could’ve met the same fate. It made me think of peril, imminent and unforeseeable. And it’s not just death, we’re at constant risk whether physical or emotional. But isn’t that what life’s worth living for? Unpredictability? There’s no manual to living. Better to accept that than work against it.
HFR: What’s next? What are you working on?
PGG: Inspired by the dream journal workshop, I’m crafting a collection guided by dreams. I’ve just been named a 2024 Periplus Fellow and as part of the fellowship my mentor Adrienne Raphel will review my manuscript. I’m hoping to get a solid draft done by the end of the year!
HFR: Take the floor. Be political. Be fanatical. Be anything. What do you want to share?
PGG: In his essay “Joy Is Such a Human Madness” from The Book of Delights, Ross Gay writes
Is sorrow the true wild?
And if it is—and if we join them—your wild to mine—what’s that?
For joining, too, is a kind of annihilation.
What if we joined our sorrows, I’m saying.
I’m saying: What if that is joy?
The idea of coming together with our sorrows for the risk of joy has had a meaningful impact on me. When we write about grief, pain, fear and share it with the world, we abandon loneliness, and settle into joy.
Paula Gil-Ordoñez Gomez is a Mexican-Spanish-American poet based in Brooklyn. She is the Social Media Manager for Brooklyn Poets and a 2024 Periplus Fellow. Her writing has been published in HAD, Variant Lit, X-R-A-Y, and Rejection Letters, among others.
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