Three Poems
David Huerta
Translated to English by Nick Hill
TO A ROCK SYNGER
Naked, misused, hoarse:
will you tell me at last what’s going on with us
or are you going to lift me up, instead, without a word,
undress me, fill my mouth with flames,
and my flesh with cold ashes?
I don’t want to see your eyes rolled back and made into dust
in the deluge of drunkenness; I don’t want to touch
your embittered arms, your weakened neck.
I prefer to put my foot on your back
and ask, threaten, darken myself
with your unhurried mockingbird insanity.
There’s the water that gushes from a soaked beastly blackbird;
there are pieces of sky in my window;
there’s the rolling of a diadem of wolves
through the heat of the pacific beach.
Don’t see me, don’t look at what I offer you:
these utensils of fiery ink, these crumpled
imperfections in my clothes, these
sweetened sparks from my quadrupled hands
between the legs of your hollow animal made of golden light.
Sing, again and again, so you can lovingly become:
naked, misused, hoarse.
SEPARATIONS
My destroyed one, don’t die. I call you
“bloodthirsty piece,” “insatiable bite,”
you aren’t here, you sad, burning thing.
The root of my lips
only has meaning in your separate breast.
Just for myself I say to you: would it be enough?
Just for my mouth
that knew your womb in the night of the world.
Would that be enough? Will that thing have one foot in life
and the other foot on top of death’s roulette?
The city is full
of strange women who don’t resemble you at all.
The air goes black with my melancholy.
Everything is becoming separated: my hands detached
and my thoughts dangling.
My destroyed one. How this light
does cultivate your name beneath my kissed heart.
OVER A SLOW FLAME
Your glass is pointed out Your frightful glassware
You shrug a saintly shoulder to make drunkenness credible
Other bodies are glass Pasture of terrestrial betrayal
Those throats you don’t see and I kiss in dreams
Those arms raised against the ramparts of sex
Those legs dissolved in the violet pool of sundown
You come back return turn Your knife-man voyages begin at dawn
Your waves slice Your remembered breath confounds
If I were to say “I miss you” if I wrote it guiltless like that
Because of those long strands because of that infinitesimal disarrangement
On account of that unbidden orgasm On account of your vivified membranes
For all that I raise my indexes to silence myself
Cause and reason to absent myself for a second two ten a thousand
I write over a slow flame Walls tremble I rub my knuckles
My vertebrae fit in your hand that much I know
And shadows forests beaches mountains lakes boats treasure you
Languid highways give me the flavor of our rains
Those years and those moribund rooms knew
We knew it all it stayed there It always comes back.
Posted: April 4, 2012 at 4:21 am
