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John Oliver Simon |
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PORTRAIT OF THE ADDICT for Karin I was stoned and in love and 40 years old and smiling toward a chill receding sunset perched in my blue jeans with bag of amulets on rusted rails stacked in Nevada desert composing, in my 38th blue notebook. with blue ballpoint pen, an acrostic poem threading the letters of my beloved's name. What was her name anyway, blonde as a swan, picking my cobwebs out of her yellow hair? LA CHACALACA for Gabriela Anaya Valdepena This girl is nothing but bones, fur, sex and words. Her palabras overflow like nipples out of a jungle of genuine leather, the semiotic mystery of her lips, tongue like a red animal kissing the sharp teeth, her reticulate karaoke saloon. Men have crossed the world and its ghost islands to set before her their offerings of fire. Nest of her body penetrated by stars. LAS ENTRAÑAS A pocos metros de los vendedores bajamos a las entrañas de la tierra donde pisó la diosa de la cruda y vuelan las mariposas como ojos sólo visibles en el infrarrojo, mientras por el río corrían versos de los que nadie sabe desenredar abrazado por el miedo cual árbol a sus raíces se abarca el corazón. Tepotzlán, Morelos original in Spanish THE ENTRAILS Not very far from the stalls of the vendors we went down into the entrails of the earth the Goddess of Hangover's old stamping ground where the huge white butterflies flutter like eyes only visible in the far infrared, with lines of poems floating down the river which no bibliographer will untangle, embraced by my fear as if I were a tree whose roots must be comprehended by the heart. EL MALECÓN for Juli Jácquez Zarzosa The second evening I knew Juli, we ran into Ricardo in a cafe along the malecón and before I knew it Juli was trying to save him, urging him to change his life, give up drugs, find something worth living for (had been in prison 10 years in Jalisco) write his autobiography, she would help him type it up, he should write it at night when he couldn't sleep, drink steamed milk when he couldn't sleep, start one thing at a time, all the good advice, Ricardo smiled and nodded, never meeting her eyes, next afternoon he strolled by my table to ask if I was interested in buying cocaine. It was the same with José Luis, the young mariachi we both fell in love with, wrote acrostic poems to, painted watercolors of his matador's smile. Juli told him to dare, to try, to never make himself small, to write songs and poems, to dream beyond his beginnings. José Luis excused himself from us as politely and dispassionately as a colonial angel. As the smoke of our Marlboros swirled and twined, Juli and I agreed right away we would never be lovers. I asked her once "¿dejamos de fumar?", should we quit smoking? and Juli laughed, "¿cómo me voy a dejar de fumar?" My money would never reach her. I could not save her. La Paz, Baja California Sur ALSO GREAT AND WILL SUFFICE for Maureen Contradiction between your wanting and my not wanting a baby is an ice-pick deep enough to ferry the Titanic. I make a scene and you refuse to answer. Reconciled, we waddle down to the village for turtle soup, but a couple of Red Tail Ales leave us mean and flighty. At bedtime, cozy, you tell me I'm like all the boys ---- mean, nasty, a pest, but with pretty eyes. We fuck. "Wedding Bells" you say distinctly out of your sleep at dawn, and "buy them back." Wrote this on the pot among slain roaches. |