Poetry

Elegy

César Vallejo, Arago Clinic, Paris, Holy Friday April 15, 1938 It was you, César, they killed to the base of your forefinger, you. Certainly they shot Pedro Rojas too. No doubt Juana Vasquez was killed. The killers, poor also, were skilled. And Emilio, they shot him, in the back of the neck, after they made…

from Alienation Effects

3 In hospital I convalesced and read the melodrama presented in Le Figaro: “On the morning of 16 November, it is alleged, Professor of Philosophy Louis Althusser strangled his wife during what has been ruled a psychotic break.” I am not psychotic, though I have indeed killed my wife. She is dead, it’s true. Not…

The Bathers

What a reprieve from all this stultifying heat. And all the threats implicit in that heat: the sweep and snare of blackberry, razor barb of concertina wire. The bluish teasel nearly chafed you with its bracts. You’ve made it through some muck with your absolute body still intact. So far, the Camp Far West lake…

Shadowboxing Herons

for the Wu Tang Clan and 1992   Shaolin’s flowers, imperial and ready for slaughter. Bobby Digital wears the wings of the only saint he knows. Come blessed angel with your skull-cup of blood. Enter this chamber with your black sword and a streetcar full of flagging desire. When the children ask for water, give…

John Henryism

The Day of Pentecost came without the usual ladder of tongues. The spike, driven through our white-bread boned shirts into our bare melon hearts, remained dry. The locusts, slung low in the trees, remained in our breath. The prophet, robed in wind, remained lost in the wilderness. The scarves about our heads. Something like a…