Day 8008 (Bloomsday)

Day 8008

I roll off the same bed

–grandparents’ wool mattress-

you were carried from naked

in a long black box

the young men struggling

down the four long flights,

your absence still palpable

in the sticky Barcelona morning;

in the bookmarked

Cien años de soledad;

in the table I write on, scarred

in the long ago move, refinished

by the carpinter who replaced 

the floor your chair scratched up,

whom I wave to on the street

every now and then.

 One of my very favorite online poetry journals, Atrium Poetry, has published a poem of mine today.

A Couple of Sundays

Thank you to editors Claire Walker and Holly McGill.

27 Years & Pájaros de Barro

 OR We Are Now in The 27 Club

Pájaros de Barro

Hoy son pájaros de barro que quieren volar –Manolo García

Our hands met in the thick clay

of providence’s two-tongued river.

We made a dam in our haste –

birds of clay from sanctified waters.

Our hands entwined and we carried

those clay birds to the sea; the beach

blew its white sand over us all –

a blessing, a bonding, a benediction.

Our hands wrenched apart – drought

in our two-tongued river drained

the sea, left you dry, me full of salt

water our clay birds could not drink.

Our hands turned into my hands which

have held our clay birds up to each

rising tide. I hold them again, feel

your touch as they empty my hands.

When I Was God - in Molecule issue 12

 

I have a tiny poem in issue 12 of  Molecule - a tiny lit mag.

on page 36 of the online PDF here: https://moleculetinylitmag.art.blog/

De Quincey’s Botany in The Georgia Review

 The Georgia Review Fall issue has published Mónica Ojeda’s Botánica de Quincey, from Historia de la leche, in my translation along with the original. The Delusional Epitaphs poem is online in English and Spanish.

Link to poem

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Bloomsday Again

 21st Bloomsday

                for Pep

Today your death is

twenty-one years old.

An adult.

Today your death could

walk into a bar in Boston

and order a Sam Adams.

Today your death could

play blackjack at Encore

(which is only five, btw).

Today your death could

rent a car, adopt a child,

be a driver's ed instructor.

Today your death is

a college junior majoring

in grief management.

Today your death is

so big it would need

numeraled candles on its cake.

Today your death will

have just fifteen more

years to live.

Poems from Mónica Ojeda's History of Milk in LALT

 Latin American Literature Today issue 27

has published a bilingual spread from Historia de la leche by Mónica Ojeda,

translated by me. There are four poems from across the collection.

Here is the link to the English : LALT