Poem V
This is the saddest street of the century.
Virgins open their window to rains
as a beloved poet's soul walks doubling with laughter
after being assassinated by a headless character from an Andalusian soleá.
Revolution! Revolution!
The lovers whisper inside each other's lips
as they make love under the trees named upon different shades of red
where our brothers went to hang themselves out of too much happiness.
Each virgin in the brothel wakes up with a different face
after long nights of dreaming, their skin—wet stone with cold.
.
This is the saddest street of the century.
Shameless spectres catcall the poet's widowers in broad daylight
as they hurry for the funeral with heads bowed after touching
the bodies touched by their beloved.
Their lover's body rote memorized by their hands has long been made a sacrament
to teach shame and sin to the youth making love inside their own graves.
We live in the north-peach part of the country—
the evenings here are fond of reading doomed Russian romances
and watching soppy telenovelas as lovers
peel each other open to the hour of smoke and rot under the open sky.
.
This is the saddest street of the century.
Obituaries obviously, sell here more than poems
and cleaning up blood and guts is the highest-paid career.
The dead shapeshift into tomatoes—all flesh and red juice,
turning into blistering moons inside our mouths
whenever we heed a call to kiss.
A song sings the earth through cobalt bones of dusk
and the street calls out, as if in a dream, its
shoulders floating away, wet with Milky way.
The light is abandoned once again,
leaving the street gleam in its sorry sorrow.
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Posted Jul 8, 2022, 6:17 PM UTC · edited