My father is “having fun”
cleaning the floor
he uses the plugged in sink as a bucket
wears rags on his feet
and shimmies to a cleaning beat
he asks me to read the label
on the bottle for him
he wants our floor to shine
and laughs when (surprise)
it does
this is how I will remember him
moonwalking across our kitchen floor
rags under his feet
“that’s how my mother taught me”
he says
“but I never take any note
it takes me forty years to do what she say”
Earmark me images
speckles pretty
with the tears of a child
open windows and summer
approaching
ominous air-marked with the first green
leaf
over-turned poems
forgotten
mouths tinkling humor
pages rustling
soft
sensible shoes
cushion/support/words
they unwind me
orange and gray laces
you/me entwined/separate
swirled
ice cream hinting the weather
may soon be
warmer
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 70th birthday.
i
used to be
a lot of things
now
I am
more.
I am cowering
in an clock that does not let go of the evening
The cage is tight
No foetus can form in this narrow waist
Every door I knock at
There again a policeman arrives
without a sneeze
Squeezing me with words
Breaking a twig
With nowhere to graft it to
Except on a branch that turned to letters of I love you
Where does it come from
This water
this question that grows
takes root
And without a father
gives the answer
A son
How can I get up with a clock
That is in a coma
And dive into the dusk
Like a dog
I’m short legged
The cats are watching
And silence
That carries the alphabet of suicide
Doesn’t break out of me
Until lips forsake “I love you”
And the foetus is detached
Under each poultice
Point per point of my body
A policeman is on his beat
They say the last flame
will ignite
in the ocean.
In the belly of the whale
that houses the forgotten myths,
in its song,
conjuring the return of the gods.
But I stored away
some matches
to safeguard the flames
of the earth.
We present this work in honor of the Tunisian holiday, Martyrs’ Day.
Do not fill their voices with smoky air
because shut mouths of despair are blocking their spit, their revived viruses,
their weaknesses to tell the story
when the noise of a rolling stone is swearing at god.
Shall I, at least, say
that memory is decayed
that history is dismayed;
that past is dead deeds
and mythological dates are the land’s seeds
as the sheep have forgotten about the wolf’s teeth
clacking?
Shall I say that Eternity
means not a Calvin Klein’s perfume
but looms above their hats and doom
denying all celebrity?
Or will you forget someday
that trees have their leaves to be lost
over heartless pebbles and frost?
I have learnt from history that dam-builders
will be forever damned.
When the water will rise with the people’s tears,
it will spare none.
Shall I tell about a woman’s cry
amid sounds and swear-words?
Or loudly my voice will tell of
female shapes whose bodies have been displaced for time and space
in fashion magazines?
Can I turn on a TV pretending to re-appropriate history
or will its waves bring about voiceless shouts?
Now, when writing is fired by scientific neutrality that cries:
“I AM THE WORLD!”
Can I, at last, see purged tongues laying down their sandals and feet
with no chance even to cheat
or tell what their hearts hide?
Will I be hanged when they will understand?
An abandoned ride
at a fair,
challenging the elements.
Everyone stops at the bull and says
I can do this.
Everyone, without exception, has confidence
in their heels
and they mount the electric violence
of its back. They’re still confident when the movement
begins,
as if a powerful, invisible hand
has slipped a token into the machine
without warning.
The metallic click cuts through the sound,
a tiny bulldozer
flattening
the silence. Then everything begins,
and there’s no way
to keep the body straight, that form
we once thought we dominated but that now
reveals itself to us
as if it has been waiting its turn
biting its nails
since it was given a name.
If I were a mouse
I would rather
lose my tail in the trap
than miss out on my cheese.
Over and over again.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 100th birthday.
A siren sang, and Europe turned away
From the high castle and the shepherd’s crook.
Three caravels went sailing to Cathay
On the strange ocean, and the captains shook
Their banners out across the Mexique Bay.
And in our early days we did the same.
Remembering our fathers in their wreck
We crossed the sea from Palos where they came
And saw, enormous to the little deck,
A shore in silence waiting for a name.
The treasures of Cathay were never found.
In this America, this wilderness
Where the axe echoes with a lonely sound,
The generations labor to possess
And grave by grave we civilize the ground.
I know what the sea tells the desert
And the words of high palm trees through gesturing
The sound of the sands praising
when water flows
The fear of the spikes harvested them
scythes of strangers
And the thirsty seed reveals to me
If he gets high, he is free
And if the wind whispers
in the wide open
I realized her grandfather’s shiver
In the ecstasy of the passions
I know what was silenced
from the sighs of the mute
when it complains to me
about the burden it bears
And the blame of the dead
The disillusions of the alive
It is the heartbreak of History
The most glorious names
And it went on to pick up the tracks
In the desperation of darkness
In honor of St. Joseph’s Day, we present this work by one of today’s most spirited Colombian poets.
Also remember, María,
four in the afternoon
in our scorched port.
Our port
that was more a stranded bonfire
or a wasteland
or a lightning flash.
Remember the burning ground,
us girls scratching the earth’s back
as if to disinter the green meadow.
The lot where they were serving the snack,
our plate brimming with onions
salted by my mother,
fished by my father.
But despite all that,
you know well,
we would have liked to invite God
to preside at our table,
God but without a word
without miracles
and only so you would know,
María,
that God is everywhere
as well as in your plate of onions
although it makes you cry.
But above all
remember me and the wound,
before they grazed from my hands
in the wheatfield of onions
to make from our bread
the hunger of all our days
so that now
that you no longer remember
and the bad seed feeds the wheatfield of the missing
I discover you, María,
which is not your fault
nor the fault of your forgetting,
for this is the time
and this its task.
Poets Corner 