Poetry
June
COLUMN/COLUMNA

June

Junio

Malva Flores

We can’t escape that mouth of summer, pronouncing

syllables of the day,

leaving us trapped in an abyss of minute hands

 —in our own pointless consolation.

 

The year goes by.

The tally of what we’ve failed to achieve has reached six months

It goes by

It passes

apple colored, it unspools

and pains the eye to see.

……

A sin

that was never bitten into.

***

I could have loved you as much

—naturally—

as one loves a rabbit

running,

watch in tow.

 

It would be a sorry rabbit

ears as long

as his haste

nose reddened

with futile effort. Quickening the pace

of everything that twists and turns.

***

Oh!

By the time Alice shows up,

all is already lost

  Hats and madness

  Hearts and queens

just a scrap of imagination, not

a long,

long,

  long

fall into the abyss

of repetition.

 

Hell is hopeless repetition

said Dante, or so they say,

or who said that, anyway?

That, I have already forgotten

but not the return

to a girlhood unstained.

***


I have scratched my feet until they bleed

I could not —or didn’t want to—

  see the signs.

 

Signs can be confusing sometimes

and I failed to hear those voices

                          through all the racket.

……………….

Nor did I know that dark matter

is more active now

than when the world began.

 

Malva Flores is a poet and essayist. Her most recent books are La culpa es por cantar. Apuntes sobre poesía y poetas de hoy (Essay, Literal Publishing / CONACULTA, 2914) and Galápagos (Poetry, ERA, 2016). She is a columnist for Literal: Latin American Voices. Twitter: @malvafg

 

©Literal Publishing

There is 1 comment for this article

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *