So the folks at Poetry Magazine "are grateful for the opportunity to read my poetry" but will not be publishing my poems. There goes my opportunity for my in-laws to believe I am truly a poet. No biggie. One of these days I may see my name in print in the "good old US of A". In the meantime, I'm writing them here, Why? Well, why not?
The Conquest
You were not looking for God’s unspeakable name on my body,
the skillful stroke of his ideogram on my face.
It was not my blood the spelling charm,
nor the ability for creation of my word what you were looking for.
For you I was only the ship
that soon you’d give to the fire.
You were only looking for
scented cardamom and ginger routes,
silky mulberry paths,
green tea-leaves and aji treasures;
and to hoist yourself proud
not fearing the fall from Earth’s precipice,
like a child who believes that the world burns out
when he closes his eyes.
You needed my tongue:
divine breath that on the first day
they blew in my mouth,
to open the scroll of secret routes
that ancient shamans hid
in each one of the thousand maids.
It was necessary to learn my speech,
but you only learned suckling from my breast.
Only under my sheets during the torrid nights
your sweaty fingers learned to decode hieroglyphs.
And you were suckered into believing
that only your mighty pen
would awaken this barbaric glossary.
You believed that only your ardent kiss
would ignite the gunpowder
that I,
silly me,
used to mix with water to make ink.
That only your hands would know how to open the book.
And that only in your land they give a man spade and quill
and they command him,
as Adam before,
to name all the new things,
that only two steps ahead are created
for his selfish wonder.
But they didn’t tell you that silent volcanoes don’t sleep,
they remain boiling,
always on the lookout.
Erastes, eromenos
They say that in ancient times the enjoyment of male flesh by virile lips
was the unique source for the knowledge of the gods.
Today you may undo yourself trying to prove that you’ve never tasted such delicacy,
but you keep the orchard fenced-in,
and only among rival virilities the fruit of knowledge is served.
But I, subversive, dared to learn
from the one who didn’t want to teach me
(openly)
beyond the scream of the paper ripping.
I was born stone furrow,
with flesh formed only under the chisel.
No one rushed to hit me to make me speak.
I can’t conceive coarse artisan hands creating the world,
when even before anyone dared to eat,
my hands already kneaded the fruit until it bled:
food of immortals.
I had to prove that I could self-immolate for my child offense,
your terror of not finding your beloved instrument in between my legs;
how eager my hands tasted my foreign ribs,
agonizing to be clean slate,
unknown stone.
I sewed my lips with silence so I wouldn’t horrify you with the shape of my sex.
And every night I had to repeat my litany of not speaking of pain nor children’s cries.
And I had to cut the constant flow of salt
of this great house that leaks even during drought.
All my effort was on the search for a phallus to give to my letter,
dreaming about inventing a binary alphabet
that would hide away my Siamese formula.
A man loves his neighbor in order to instruct him,
however,
he does not love a woman but to learn through her unawareness.
When you spoke of your imaginary crusades,
when you evaded my questions born out of my tormented naiveté,
with my ridiculous and amused desire
(the same you never found lucrative to exploit)
I learned many secrets,
everything your tender flesh ignored:
a bounty of trivialities.
I have built my room with stolen things,
and I no longer hide my natural drive to possess.
While you want to sweep under the dust
that I did not offer your body away to save myself.
I do not wait with desperation by the door,
fearing you may come to claim your baggage,
they are all things lost in a long and heated journey,
things buried down in a lost and found that no one misses.
Instead, I patiently care for the box,
tied up with my meticulous nostalgia
and the silk ribbon I finally ripped off my tireless wound.
I have started to doubt
this intelligent design,
not because I am unable to believe,
stubbornly,
in a figurative speech.
But because you gave to me:
no sense of space,
the credibility of reptiles,
curves that his hands
had to touch in order to believe,
and the ability to learn
only through my errors.
Another story tells
that you tried everything more than once,
and that every failed pot
could not utter your name.
That you were a father
only when he gave you the term,
just as I
carry the name of his lust.
That in every place you searched for matter
to give him flesh.
you played with textures,
with materials.
And that only until he shouted your name
you didn’t think that what was made
was good.
I don’t know if really I come from him,
because I don’t feel
like perfected creature.
I identify myself more with your mistakes,
with the abject that is mixed again with the dough
to try once more.
Let him boast a little more
of being your beloved son,
your chosen people.
I want to be the instrument of your leaning.
You only possessed my mouth to silence me,
to strangle my breath.
On the great house threshold
you let me touch your intact chest,
and count the perfect number of your ribs,
and before you left you thanked me for
each one of my six failed spells,
smug about ruining,
forever,
any possible communication between us.
I did not want to sleep
trapped under your weight,
I wanted to walk around attached to you by the hip.
I never fed you,
and I couldn't make you eat,
word by word,
my poetry.
I forgot to write on your wide forehead
the magical word that could protect me.
No charm grew on my chest,
to stop your big child hand
that kneaded, in amazement,
my heart
(or at least my left breast)
With cruel and childish frenzy
you crumpled it
until it spoke no more,
and later,
prone to boredom,
you threw it away
with the rest of the guts of the slaughter house beasts.
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