A Mexican migrant worker was kept sedated in an Oregon mental hospital for two years because doctors couldn’t understand his Indian dialect. Hospital staffers ruled Adolfo Gonzales was mentally ill because “he couldn’t speak to us to tell us he wasn’t.” These are the words you did not have to tell them who you were,…
Probably God laughs at us, down here, entranced As, to quiet us, He tosses down another season, And we ooh and ah—like infants silenced By the jangling of keys above a playpen— At the all-effacing green or white or gold, Or even something small: a stem, a robin, A brittle smattering of stars across a…
October in mission creep, autumnal reprise and stand down. The more reality takes shape, the more it loses intensity— Synaptic uncertainty, Electrical surge and quick lick of the minus sign, Tightening of the force field Wherein our forms are shaped and shapes formed, wherein we pare ourselves to our attitudes . . ….
Yet another Puerto Rican Buddhist. He wants to breathe in peace, while keeping his rice- and-beans cooking skills, his accent, his blue jeans from the Santana years, his wine and rum collections housed inside his head. Today’s lesson: fireflies know they’re grasshoppers’ illusory stars. And that Puerto Rico is only a comma in Time’s poem…
In Mexico we danced on the edge where the saguaro cacti stood up like billboards of cactus in the Persian blue twilight of Tucson— ah, the desert in bloom lizards with space-gear helmets on our sill and we in our deck chairs taking the winter sun! Nothing to do but listen to wind in…
translated from the Ukrainian by Lisa Sapinkopf and the author It could be dawn. The light, crumpled like sheets. The ashtray full. A shadow multiplies on four walls. The room is empty. No witnesses. But someone was here. A moment ago twin tears shimmered On polished wood (Did a couple live here?) In the armchair…
The anesthetist seems to bounce off the walls. It is very late. As if underground The trolley with my daughter crawls With her ruined appendix. Wide and blue The gowned anesthetist’s speech is strange. As he pats each wall, words flash from true. His accent is thick as the paint’s veined white On the glimmering…
Since my chronic bad luck Vanished in my love’s deck of cards, I step around them softly, I won’t open the window on windy days. I unpin her long black hair And strip down her dress myself, Lest their flutter stirs the dead air And make the cards fly. I tell her, Don’t even think…
translated from the Ukrainian by Lisa Sapinkopf and the author O conductor of candles! Eyes shimmer with reflections . . . Black web of shadows, break apart for an instant— Yes, for just the single gesture with which he tears off his gloves I’d accept even more than my earthly travails! Conductor of…
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