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A Review of Somerville’s Poet Laureate Gloria Mindock New Collection of Verse by Brookline Poet Laureate Zvi Sesling:

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

In her latest book of poetry Gloria Mindock resurrects Francisco Franco, the one-time brutal dictator of Spain. In previous works, Mindock has provided

I Wish Francisco Franco Would Love Me
by Gloria Mindock
Copyright © 2018 Gloria Mindock
Nixes Mate Books
Allston, MA
ISBN 978-0-9993971-9-0
Softbound, 48 pages, $9.95

descriptions of how dictatorships swim in the blood of victims. In I Wish Francisco Franco Would Love Me, Mindock uses Franco’s obsessiveness with a voice that shouts for an end to the cruelty of dictatorships everywhere.

Here is Dictator, in which she tells readers about Franco and his ongoing need to destroy people:

A dictator is not a spectator.
A spectator is not a dictator.
Why do you make everyone in Spain listen?

Some will betray you, rise-up.
You do not love!
You do not love!
Brutal Franco!
Brutal Franco!
You slob!
Messy in the heart. Kicking it out of your chest.

Even your heart knows you have secrets
cascading down into your pants.

Throats are slit today, bullets are fired, bombs dropped.
Plaza’s preserved as killing fields.

Big man Franco leaves terror.
Too many Fathers are dead.
Never to hold their children again.
Killing in Bejar today …
Fascist!
Randomly killing what suits you.

Mindock is a particularly fine poet whose many dark works awaken people to the evil conduct of dictators, which is often minimized in history and in the media, until the brave come forth to reveal the excesses of violence:

In Les Milles, a young girl raped at the age of ten somehow survives and is rescued so

“One less surrounded by dark colored roses,/a chill in the air and scars left on the face”

“Big Killer Franco – Men want to shoot you in the back.? Turn your head towards them Franco./ Look them in the eye as they fire./But they don’t fire./You say, execute them and walk away./A grin on your face…/Customary.”

*”Franco murdered memories./The dead converse with their screams”

*”A hat falls on the ground boldly/hugging the blood”

And in the poem Orbit Mindock describes the aftermath of a bomb perfectly placed:

One bomb lunges
Chars the sunrise
Whispering graves now a museum
Scars left
Bones face the other planets
A planet showing what exile is

Mindock’s poetry is never to be taken lightly. It thrives on blood, torture and evil individuals while always letting the reader know that she is on the side of the oppressed wherever they live. In Blood Soaked Dresses and The Whiteness Of Bone she addressed the horrors of Central American dictatorships. And in this latest endeavor she reminds anyone who may want to remember Francisco Franco in some favorable fashion, that he was nothing more than a brutal dictator.

Zvi A. Sesling, author of The Lynching of Leo Frank and the forthcoming War Zones (Nixes Mate Books), is publisher and editor of Muddy River Poetry Review, and editor of Bagel Bard Anthologies 7,8 and 12, as well as serving as Poet Laureate of Brookline, MA.