after Lorca;, for Ray Gonzalez ∞ Plod the entirety of a country in someone else’s shoes. Smell of rot. Women clutch a stranger’s child found sobbing along the shoulder of unmarked forks. Tethered to nothing — together — they march out to sea. ∞ Spotted by a murder of crows: mummified figures half-buried beneath a stand of Palo Verde trees. Border is a moving finish line — makeshift shrines are left to comfort spirits at unrest. X marks the spot to shallow mounds of polished pebbles, flora halos withered, relinquished rosaries. Sluggish winds whisper: pluck prickly pears from hosts, split them open to resurrect hauntings of thirst… ∞ Wren’s waifish skull leans against a ladder of fishbone; hoary scales glitter in moonlight. Dainty ships drift in corked bottles: infinitude air-sealed. Faraway panoramas spellbind when pain is sieve. Dreaming of utopia & its tall cities — oceans never sleep. ∞ A poet says there is something alive about the desert. Blistering childhoods breed a certain strain of resilience. Even in perpetual winter, you carry that heat with you. ∞ Disembodied legs & headless chests glimpsed from ribbed metal piles — bodies lean off the rails to trace reflections in the fever river. Slurred collages: every night dancer is a stranger grinding darkness — a permanent gloaming. ∞ Weight of sand slips away in frets of hands like an hourglass; ruched hem of a flamenco dress is a ripple of waves. Cutout windows in the hull are eyes fixed to the world, gazing for words printed in the embers of stars: Gemini, Dorado, Norma, Crux, Cassiopeia, Orion, Lynx. Handwritten books are burned — their spines coil & char. ∞ …woodland creature guards the shrub picked clean of berries — waiting for spring, ∞ Federico García Lorca said: “it’s power, not a / work. It is a struggle, / not / a thought. Not in the throat, climbs up / inside you, from the soles / of the feet. Meaning: / it is not a question of / ability, but of true, living / style, of blood, / of the most ancient / culture, of spontaneous / creation.” ∞ Arched by the heart of a steady bulb, eyes pinched & narrowed, licking ends of threads to forge swords, lancets — spinning miniature wheels of a vintage Singer, stepping on the treadle to compose melodies in E minor for angels stripped of their wings — for remaining ∞ Odyssey of what can be carried on bowed shoulders. Prayer is compass & sail. There’s no turning back.

Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.