sestinas by Murillo, “The Corner” and “Santayana.”

Class,

Your second assignment is to write a sestina.

Please come with your sestina completed and typed for class.

Be sure to choose your six words for your sestina carefully!

For reference, we discussed a poem by John Murillo. Here are two sestinas by Murillo, “The Corner” and “Santayana.”

Notice the pattern for a sestina.

Sestinas have seven stanzas.

Six stanzas have six lines each.

The seventh stanza has three lines.

The words at the end of each line of the first stanza are repeated throughout the poem.

Sometimes, words are substituted with words that mean the same or sound the same as the original.  For instance, at one-point Murillo uses cross instead of across or replaces cells with sales. Or even weight turns to sweat.

The end words of the first stanza are repeated in a 615243 pattern.

The seventh stanza repeats the six end words in three lines: 1/4, 2/5, 3/6.

In Murillo’s first poem, “The Corner,” The 615243 patter switches from stanza to stanza as follows:

1. here
2. back
3. head
4. sale
5. wait
6. cross
7. cross 1
8. here 2
9. wait 3
10. back. 4
11. sale. 5
12. head. 6

6 head.  1

1 cross 2

5 sale 3

2 here 4

4. back 5
5. wait 6

6 wait 1

1 head 2

5 back 3

2 cross 4

4 here 5

3 sale 6

6 sale 1

1 wait 2

5 here 3

2 head 4

4 cross 5

3 back 6

6 back 1

1 sale 2

5 cross 3

2 wit 4

4 head 5

3 here 6

1/4

2/5

3/6

The Corner

Hard rain and reggaeton score the night. On this block here,
at this hour, when even alley cats know to keep in shadow, backs
to the wall and ears piqued, the few renegade rain-soaked heads
you come across are here on business. Transactions and sales,
give and take in the marketplace of the moon. If you wait
long enough, they say, you can hear the hellhounds’ bay.  The cross-

roads—in the swollen tongue of work-weary bluesmen across
geography and generations—is where you’re standing. It’s here,
they say, where Robert Johnson sold his soul to learn the sweet
secret of conjuring moonlight from string and wood. When back-
roads all seemed to lead to the same place, men fresh from their cells
would come to strike deals on a new start in life, to get ahead.

Take this young boy, JoJo. Fresh out the joint, before he’d head
anywhere near his mama’s house, he’d run straight here. Across
the street from the carryout and check cashing spot, he’ll peddle
his rocks to anybody who pushes past. Even little Ebony. Hear
she was prom queen once, drove the young boys crazy back
in the days before JoJo caught hold of her. How the weight

melts from face and neck. How skin cankers, and blood and sweat
crust corners of lips licked only in wet dreams. How she gives head
now by the dumpster behind the church, fucks, how fast five bucks
find their way back to JoJo’s hands. And Jesus on a stone cross
watches it all from on high. How it begins, ends, and begins again here.
On the corner. Tonight, rain clouds bruise the sky. JoJo sells

like a man with plans, as if he can buy his way away. Sells
as if he were the first to have such ideas. As if moving weight
wasn’t just a new name for an old dream. When his mama was out here,
they used to call it pushing. By the time his daughter’s head
can fit its first wig, they’ll be calling it something else. The cross-
roads has seen it all. Seven hundred sixty-two JoJos, JoJoing back

to the days of fire-can crooners, doo-wop daddies and off-key back-
up singers, warming hands and running from the police. As if their cells
were hardwired for trouble, they’d find new lines to cross and cross
again. And find themselves back on the courtyard, lifting weights.
Or back on cots reading or writing letters, letting dreams cloud their heads
like good ganja. After years locked down, they all end up back here.

You’ve seen how they come back. Years lifting or losing weight,
thugs turned sissy or cell-block Muslim, some with heads

full of schemes to cross the system, some half-dead. But all here.