Shane Book
LAST
The difficulty of staying
on after all the sandstone has been looted
off the sand-sea barges. There’s a place you don’t wanna
be. Where the wind eats the evening’s seed
and the pummeled trees grow to look like tonsils.
One or two cries rang out just before you arrived.
A wandering drumming washed in:
your tar lady.
I’ve been worried about these ropy clouds
and her. She’s a problem, whipping post or no.
Strap on your feet.
They fit well. They’re the color of dirt.
If you want to leave
you won’t take the skins.
Skins are useful.
Anyway you are staying here.
That’s what the chain
of insects is for.
---
Jorge Gómez
THRESHOLD
A path was born.
Facilis est descensus Avernus.
I followed it and I saw that threshold
perhaps intended to slipstream
of north wind emanating from trees.
But the stillness of the anonymous shadows.
Earth and stone
Flourished before it; a howl in tremolo
Where light and shadow lived
By separations.
I wanted to go over but I felt anxiety
like a child learning to draw
Far away, slid
the echoes of fiery words.
I am a lack in the womb. It is useless to seek warmth
when a man listens to his own regret.
I shrink. Behind me there is nothing
Like a madman abandoned in a corner;
I wait for the ultimate evil happens to me.
Because I suffer a life waiting
This is the entrance to terror
That oppresses us with a finger
Black as a bat's mouth
In what corner I expected
the hand that cut my neck?
Men have maimed eyes
A torment of light is an imposed custom
I wrap up into blackness
I have dark thoughts.
They are like bits of morphine
Under my tongue.
Men who traveled with me
were blind. They had been invaded
by torpor of being together
Between the threshold and
this corner of darkness
There is a slight nuance;
a mile of veins and swans
I love the dark sensuality and celestial lust
With the old habit of unearthing
I think. As if -lying here-,
I make love to that reality
And I penetrate this sallow mantle
However, I feel nothing more
Than the charm threshold
The mouths of caves devour me
Where I come from
Only exists the certainty of perishing
As exist night noises
and insects slaughtered
by the lanterns that govern
thresholds.
---
Diego Ortuño (Don. D. Dantés)
LONG LIVE AMÉRICA!
América
once was a dream
Long live América
Long live to soldiers
that died in wars
Long live to non-soldiers
that felt guilty
about not dying in wars
Long live to writers
that wrote history
about those wars
and gave them a date
for a party, to remember
the blood of soldiers
and the why of war
and its blood
Long live to writers
who explained that why
Freedom! they said
No more empire!
No more queens or kings!
No more watchmen
abusing of powerless people!
We are the people!
We are the people!
And today
I want to say
"We are the people!"
once again
And say it from my heart
standing in a new land
I want to remember
about those soldiers
who did not want to die
in wars
About non-soldiers
that felt guilty
about not stoping
their friends
that went to wars
About writers
that wrote history
about those wars
and gave them a date
for a mourn, to remember
the blood of soldiers
and the why of war
and its blood
Freedom! they said
No more empire!
No more presidents or parliaments!
No more watchmen
abusing of powerless people!
We are the people!
We are the people!
América
once again is a dream
Long live América!
---
Gustavo Moya
HAIKU
Put a chooch, a
cool "o"
on the verge.
by: Zen Kennedy
---
Pablo Flores Chaves
THE CHAIN
The chain
The past of a shallow bread,
takes our own immensity
a mirror fracture against the dark snow.
Underneath our footsteps
the silken knots of a pattern unknown
will soon close
what we still try to call universal selection.
The road aligns three hugs
from a spot near the inner sequence
Was it, the fine piece of an endless light-rut?
the given motion that brought us here.
Or was it clarity,
gleaming away with the slow road,
the bed time story
that claims the obscenity of a single blooded child
sticking the fork into the mature flesh.
After the barber
the hair of an angel in movement with the simple soul
will bow .
Called it whatever you want
dislocated rain pores are opening our possible thread
the toiling vessel that caught us up
into the night stand,
our chain.
---
Santiago Soto (Truly Gómez)
TENGO MIEDO DE LAS CHICAS ESTÚPIDAS (para S.)
dwelling into a night
in which there was too much to do
my love
she went cracking her head
like a whore
like I sometimes do
I wont do the dishes for her
I wont make the bed
now she lives and likes another man
me precupan tus estupideces frecuentes
la maravilla de veces que no sabes
cuanto te haces fantástica
se te pelan las cutículas
y no sabes hacer el amor
te brindas
me brindo
y el canto rebosa
se empapan las nubes
se riega el candado
I finally will always remember you
as I do
Julieta Salgado
PROPREITY
My flat footed steps work best
when bared to the ground.
It’s la Manaba in me.
I click my tongue when I disapprove.
I cook without shoes on.
I cup babies and laundry baskets
[ on my panoramic hips.
I don’t want to explain these things
[ to anyone anymore,
My heart lifts when I smell smoke,
When I think I smell plantains roasting.
I see the green palm leaves swaying
Hibiscus bushes, Royal Macaw dancing,
[ papaya juice ready.
But I am in the white washed suburb
And I smell some far out mirage up north.
This is my secret heart.
My heart of hearts.
The soft-layered heart of a thorny palm.
It loves a heavy cloud full of rain.
