We stand hushed on the patio. Stars fall—bright ash—between branches of the large mesquite leaning over us as the scientist—our unexpected guest—holds high the recording of elf owls hooting he’d magically found in his car. They’re in the saguaro, he whispers. They’ll answer. And silent we listen. Waiting for one then another owl to sound,…
for Yannis Ritsos for years in exile on an island, wrote with no other witness than sea wind and the ranked blue waves, wrote on scraps of paper skinned from cigarettes hiding the rolled-up poems in his trouser cuffs, permitting guards to believe that his pen was for stones, for finding faces in the stones…
Some days each grain of her drags through unsafe air. I wrap her in stardust scarves that float around the anchors of her heavy arms, those limbs anchoring her, and me, to all the words we women drag behind us, the ones we wish we could dust off: fat, bitch, she wishes. I reach for the…
Translated from the Spanish by Pablo Medina That pasta in cream sauce we made when we finished,that pasta we ate still trembling(we left the water on the stove,on a very low flame,and fifteen minutes before the endyou flew, barefoot, and threw it inand barefoot flew back, remember?) That pasta back when dusk fellwith its smell of…
You’re kept in capsules on the bathroom counter, a synthetic strain of vitamin A, sealedfor potency. Your purpose is to shieldthe face from signs of aging. Over-the-counter lacks the power existing in medical grade— though too much, over time, can blur the vision, incite a kind of skin-peeling conditionor frail the bones. Your purest form betrayed the man who…
Before your birth, I marked you as my own,the way I marked your mother before hers.Inscribed on every cell of every bone,the standard of my family never blurs.I coil between the makings of your bedand in the small hours whisper you awake.I poison every sentence in your headand all those comforts other people take.Eat salmon, buy a doodle, down the pillsthe doctor tenders…
Translated from the Spanish by Pablo Medina A man and a woman walk down the streetlaughing. They make plans.They had a grand time in the hotel where they made loveand they laugh, make another date for tomorrow. Life is wonderful.Tomorrow he’ll be laid out in a funeral home one hourbefore their tryst (the scaffoldingbroke loose…
Down at the beach.The lake trying to wash the moon off its back.The moon trying to ride the horse of the lake.Me lighting a candle and sticking it in sand.Another. Making a circle for the windto burn its fingers on. For the moonto read a flickering elegy to itself.The infinite same syllable of the surf.Is…
well—i suppose we could spend more time pretendingi bought a new suit for carnegie hall—bought a new suitfor the occasion, bought a new suit with dues from parisyes it’s true, he pays a price for an america which stillleaves a balance. well—i have a future held in the lungsof this great thundering silence. this sleeping…
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