translated from the Spanish by Ilan Stavans Thick, pristine beast, Saint Elephant, sacred animal of perennial forests, sheer strength, fine and balanced leather of global saddle-makers, compact, satin-finished ivory, serene like the moon’s flesh, with minuscule eyes to see—and not be seen— and a singing trunk, a blowing horn, hose of the creature rejoicing in…
New York City, August 13, 2003 All this is not unusual in DR or Iraq. The city’s extension cord shorts. Afternoon, offices evacuate. The focus is on feet, some people walking through boroughs for the first time. We stare at our feet, elbow to elbow eyeing packed buses. Some hitch rides on the back of…
rolled through the city. Whoever has an answer won’t last. Traffic muscles through. Whole families lazing on steps eating grapes. “No I’m not,” says the youngest to her canary. “You grew into your legs, Tall One, didn’t you.” Then no one. Loosed papers flatten the fences. Bits of glass rest there and burn. This part…
The first time she could remember hearing thunder she’d been sitting on her grandma’s lap in the formal parlor of the big old house where she was visiting. She flinched and shuddered. “What’s that, Grandma?” she’d asked. “That is the voice of God,” the old woman said, and then they heard it again rolling out…
I had torn the quads in both legs and had to be poured into the back seat so when we parked at Home Depot, I was being slid out on a plastic sheet when a red sports car pulled in next to us, the door swung open and a hand cast out a folded wheelchair…
Mom has already made arrangements for a spot inside the churchyard wall among the old Yankee slates, some fallen, and the granites from foreign places, tilted by frost. A mason sets them straight again each spring. Perennials for the formal beds accepted with gratitude; no other plantings allowed. Cut flowers may be laid on the…
You’d think he was nervous the way he fits and starts. His skittery dodges, dipping below the visible, make us wait for a scratch on our eye which comes to show he’s gone again elsewhere. How does he find his way? you said, and I saw night close in like a room with…
I woke up this morning with my mouth full of words Like “Crenellated battlements,” and cranciousness And bicycles with “derailleur” and flywheels and tappets. These words must be escapees from where they grew bored. Stuck in the same old sentences they decided to break out And now they are fugitives in my mouth and ears….
Avila, 1982 When the civil guards approached me and asked me for my papers, I recalled the face of a sunny saint being disemboweled on the rack. Widows in perennial black, addicts of prayer, find comfort here the way monks in hair shirts must take to penance, or me, addled in my blissed-out days in…
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