Traducción: María Del Castillo Sucerquia

AUTUMN SETS In the paleness of my den ere I fix to light, muted on bricks and dusty curtains, a window faces upward bound, yet nothing in its recess but a cold absence, skeletal leaves left broken from summer. She left me. So I turn away to nothing but stairs leading to bent door, from some foundation swing until a jam never to open again. Her scent lingers. Trapped am I without a word spoken for my reprieve from darkness where I sleep. So I claw and hammer vibrations...

DOORS AND WINDOWS We’d given up the cat for dead, but a neighbor reported, a cavity beneath the porch of an empty house across the street had drawn cats before, her own once for ten days. On my knees I peered, heard mewing, coaxed her out musty and thin, carried her back; homecoming or capture. As I lay here tonight another leaf falls from the struggling avocado tree, root-bound in a bucket by the window, sucking in water the radiator robs relentlessly from her leaves. The cat cries at...

WASP IN A TRAP What trick is this room with no escape, this plastic cone hung from a branch? The wasp followed the sweet scent through the air’s various tripwires, and believed it found a heart, a host body? Attraction is as natural as repulsion, but what force keeps it crawling here, an instinctual scent, or a trapdoor, a way out? Because I haven’t found my way out of a body since birth, because you’ve taught me to see all the world as a trap, I now understand I...

TRASH AND TREASURE When I was kid there were large fires in front yards with junk cars, broken refrigerators and rusty tractor parts women that were not pretty and fat in dingy dresses ‘n mussed up hair walked into the yard carrying trash to dump piles by men with poking sticks yelling “git!” at kids zooming in to steal a prize anything they could find that’d be held up high and claimed as “Mine!” To Throw in the Fire I wanted to play there where fire wasn’t dangerous But...

ΤΑ ΠΟΙΗΜΑΤΑ ΒΡΙΣΚΟΥΝ ΜΟΝΑΧΑ ΤΟΥΣ ΦΑΡΟΦΥΛΑΚΕΣ. Τα ποιήματα γράφονται στη ρωγμή του μετώπου ανθρώπων που γεννήθηκαν λειψοί μα δεν το ξέραν γιατί τους βρήκε η συμφορά στη μήτρα και βάζαν τα χέρια ασπίδα στον κύκλο που τους βάραινε το στέρνο. Τα ποιήματα βρίσκουν μοναχά τους φαροφύλακες. Στέκουν στα ραγισμένα δωμάτια με τα δάχτυλα σκάφτουν τους τοίχους τα πόδια καρφώνουν στη σχισμή του δαπέδου και γίνονται ρίζες. LOS POEMAS ENCUENTRAN SÓLO A LOS FAREROS Los poemas están escritos en las grietas de las frentes de quienes nacieron desaparecidos sin saberlo...

BLANKET FORT Pandemic Poem, 2020 My son calls from his glassy high-rise on FaceTime to show me the blanket fort he and his girlfriend built the night before. Outside, the doors of the world had shut, orange tape crisscrossed playgrounds, and balconies spilled with singing. Inside apartment five was a fraying blue sheet for sky spread over couch cushions and Amazon boxes. He told me they propped pillows underneath to watch a movie online, talked about what to order for dinner, and where they were going to work out...

KISSED I am fifteen, smoking in a hay barn with a boy I hardly know, the day stretched behind us, the fall of evening passing shadows through gaps in corrugated tin. It is madness, this risk too far, as I taste the smoke-spill on his mouth and wonder at the old man’s dog outside on the concrete, untroubled by the fading light. BESADA Tengo quince, fumo en un granero de heno con un chico que apenas conozco. El día se alarga detrás de nosotros, la caída de la tarde...

HELLO KITTY BACKPACK — Ajo, Arizona I came upon you twelve miles from the nearest paved road. Prim magenta bow above one ear unblinking face tipped up into the sun from your peppermint pink zippered pocket. Kitty, surely you must know all things in the desert fade and crack but you seem serene one paw raised, a demure shrug. It’s one-hundred-and-ten degrees today hushed but for the pulse in my ears the clink of a kicked rock. You are so petite. A change of clothes, a liter water bottle...

ΠΑΓΚΟΣΜΙΟ ΕΘΝΟΣ Τινάζουν τη νύχτα απ΄ τα μαλλιά τους. Τακτοποιούν τα στρωσίδια∙ μισή κουβέρτα επάνω, μισή κουβέρτα κάτω. Τώρα διπλώνουν τη στρωμνή∙ παρειές από χαρτόνια συσκευασίας. Κι΄ ύστερα αφήνουν την πλατεία∙ ξεχύνονται στους δρόμους. Νεαρές λέξεις διασκελίζοντας τις συμβάσεις του κόσμου. Και παραμάσχαλα το προσκεφάλι∙ μια αλλαξιά ηπείρους στη νάιλον σακούλα. NACIÓN GLOBAL Sacuden a la noche por el pelo. Arreglan las sábanas, mitad manta arriba, mitad manta abajo. Ahora, doblan el colchón, y cierran las lengüetas de las cajas de cartón. Luego, abandonan la plaza, se dispersan en...

ΗΑΡΧΗ ΚΑΙ ΤΟ ΤΕΛΟΣ ΤΗΣ ΑΓΑΠΗΣ αγαπάμε αυτό που μας κάνει άντρες και γυναίκες παιδιά της ηλικίας πατέρες του εαυτού μας ένα δέντρο που φύτεψε ένας πρόγονος και το λατρέψαμε γιατί είχε μέσα του βροχή και αίμα και δίπλα σπείραμε φυτά και προσδοκίες και βάλαμε στοιχήματα με τον εαυτό μας κι ύστερα ένας άντρας χλωμός σαν άρρωστος ήλιος μας πλησιάζει κουβαλώντας στην πλάτη μια νταμιτζάνα κρασί φορώντας τα παπούτσια και τις κάλτσες του νεκρού πατέρα PRINCIPIO Y FINAL DEL AMOR amamos lo que nos hace hombres y mujeres niños...