like the kicks of a pissed off god
with thirty-yard feet.
The ship drove fast,
creaking and moaning,
and southward we fled.
Then that motherfucking god
guided us into his bladder,
full of ice blocks
that floated around like huge emeralds;
a virtual necklace surrounded us—
the necklace of a madam descending a staircase
to take care of her customers;
Death, cold and lonely,
with her chest full of jewels
and pockets filled with skulls
that can no longer see.
“Not shapes of men or of beasts,
only fog-formed illusions seemed alive.
Black clouds with sharp teeth
opened their wide mouths, their jaws unhinged.
Spinal columns emerged from the sea
without skin or flesh,
bony snakes of what had been.”
The bride’s brother
listened to the story, unmoving.
His nose dripped—
white—
like the keel of the ship.
The cursed ship of the Mad Mariner.
A stain on his pants, between his legs,
grew steadily; even that was white.
The garden had disappeared.
The sounds of the party are swallowed,
like everything else,
by a giant toad
sitting on the edge of the man’s mind,
ready to jump and take it all away.
“At last a blessing was among us;
a girl came through the fog.
She was a ray in that ice graveyard.
She ate what we gave her,
what the storm had left to us—
beans, dried meat—
She was hungry.
“The ice did split with a thunder fit;
the helmsman steered us through.
We were free!
But the girl was not a siren with shark teeth.
She had long legs, long bones, no tail;
but she wasn’t an angel.
She was beautiful, an alien sunflower
that turns toward too many stars,
making them slaves
of her small crown of yellow spears,
of her rough pubescence
oozing Saturn’s honey.
Her floral axis, its roots dug into the wooden planks,
became the totem, the altar, of my companions.
“I realized after nine nights
that the chains of storm, of fate, were better
than those of that demon
with amber skin and white fingers;
a strange Venus born of an ice womb
in extreme solitude,
which makes it all the same at first glance:
men, seagulls, whales, beans—
living things, big or small,
to play with, and then to cut into pieces,
inside and out,
with the blade of boredom.”
“God save thee, old fool
from your madness!”
the bride’s brother screams,
his tongue finally loose,
swallowing nails
in his bitter, drugged throat.
But the Mariner doesn’t give up his prey.
He must tell the end of his story
before leaving.
“With my knife . . . I kill the girl,”
he continued.
Part II
“It was too late to kill her.
The girl had already given birth,
her white, slimy eggs on the deck
filled with other girls that throbbed
in their web of veins.
On board there was the plague of demons—
I was the only one to see them.
My companions hated me
for killing the big sunflower, the mother
of those beautiful creatures
that came out of their shells.
“They copulated, screaming like pigs,
the grip of those white virgin thighs
breaking backs and souls.
I saw it, floating in the cold sea,
where they had thrown me
after tying my neck with the guts of an albatross,
because, they said,
I’ll never fly like that dismembered bird.
I had to pay for my crime—
Killer of sunflowers!
“Night came on the scene
wearing its more obscene dress,
its black lips and red tongue
covered with incandescent corals.
While the current pushed me toward the banks
of the ship, in the distance
I saw dancing wildfires and sperm rainbows.
The water, like a witch’s oils,
burned green and blue.
Then the sea became completely white,
and on the shore where I sat and waited,
the bloated corpses of my companions
began arriving,
a neat row of black stuff
in that huge white sea.”
“Let me go, you’re crazy!”
The bride’s brother
bit his lips until they bled
to escape the illusions
of the cursed Mariner.
He closed his eyes, the vision vanished.
He found himself in front of the mirror,
the old fool was crumbled—
white powder, two strips
on top of the sink—
The brother takes his credit card,
divides the two parallel lines, and sniffs deeply.
“Wow, fuck those stories!”
The shape of a ship appears in the mirror.
“Damn!”
The brother looks at the scene
through a deformed porthole:
Two women playing dice in the cabin. They laugh.
Their skin, troubled by leprosy, goes to pieces.
The game is done! I’ve won! I’ve won!
Quoth she and whistles thrice.
They laugh, they speak loudly.
The brother looked upon the rotting deck,
and there lay the dead men—
the companions of the old fool—
their eyes open,
looking through the same porthole
to the other side:
they observe the bride’s brother,
his face too white, his invisible chain
heavier than the guts of albatrosses
around the neck of the Mad Mariner.
They know he is going to die.
They expect to take him across
to the other side.
The brother falls to the ground,
hidden memories bouncing out:
—His sister, wedding dress on the bed—
—Her right breast sneaking out of the bra—
—The dogs of cocaine, out of their cage, growling—
—The sex viper biting, snapping forward—
—Leprosy liquid gushing—
—The rape, his bleeding knuckles—
—Keep your mouth shut, or I’ll kill you!—
The guests rush,
shouting in dismay.
The Mad Mariner moves away;
there is too much confusion.
Death has wasted its time.
It was useless to try to convince the man
that its proposal was better than the death of life
offered by his sister, the blonde bitch
who had won the man’s soul at dice.
She takes off the old skin
and combs her long, black hair.
She grabs a glass of champagne.
The party is not over yet.
The bride kneels before the body of her brother.
She sees f
oam dangling from his mouth—
heart attack—
You deserve it, you bastard!
But white eggs are growing in her belly,
slimy, fresh eggs.
Death in life doesn’t like to lose a game.
It’s better to start over
with the son of the bastard—
nine months will pass quickly.
But soon he heard the splash of oars,
He heard the pilot’s cheer;
His head was turned perforce away
And he saw a boat appear.
(Inspired by Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.)
LACRIMOSA
The girl cries,
sitting on her piece of sidewalk.
The ravens dance, cawing,
forming a narrow, black circle
around the little hooker
who plugs her ears not to hear.
Their beaks suck
at the puddles of tears,
small oceans from young eyes,
without a seabed,
without coral’s colorful bones.
The biggest raven observes the scene,
keeping its balance on a branch—
the totem of flesh that everyone venerates—
it flaps its wings,
its chorus of feathers
merged with the strident violins
of the car’s brakes,
singing for the girl
below the streams of her runny makeup.
The girl’s face is streaked by black lines,
infinite.
They are her faded thoughts, watered down,
drawing the lines of a requiem,
a white pentagram
on a black background.
The first customer of the evening
opens the window of his car,
hands a handkerchief to the girl,
then his sticky tongue,
the one of a heretic chameleon,
snaps toward his prey,
hitting her lukewarm wings.
The girl is dragged across the asphalt
to the man’s mouth,
his reptile heart
and infected belly.
The black car moves away.
The biggest raven chases it
toward the parking lot to the east,
a graveyard of strains, beheaded trees;
a rectangle of cement
pierced by gold manholes
which lead straight to hell.
The bird rotates its turbid eyes,
sees the man sucking his fingers,
enjoying,
pants down,
the taste of honey and Eden’s tomatoes,
the bittersweet, delicious pulp
of the torn, sold adolescence,
licking as the god of the saddest violins—
salt, tides, tears
of a sea never crossed
never pierced by a bow.
Amen.
THE PAWN SHOP
Temperance runs along the road,
wearing her yellow dress
stained with withered flowers,
rusty petals
fall on the sidewalk,
traces of her
leading to the pawn shop.
Temperance is a broken-hearted woman.
In the pond of her memories,
furious crocodiles are wallowing,
nibbling everything
piece by piece.
Mr. Wang is waiting for her,
as he does every Thursday.
His little eyes scan the windows,
the people passing,
the people who are ashamed to come in.
The wind lifts the tides of petals
from that open-mouthed sidewalk,
a well-known cemetery
full of mousetraps.
Temperance pushes the door,
a bell rings.
Mr. Wang’s eyes rotate
as lemons, cherries, plums,
as the beautiful red sevens
of the slot machines—
all those colorful combinations,
always losers,
diluted by the rotten kidneys of fate.
Dreams of others pissed into the water.
Not those of Mr. Wang
who has a special, shimmering lever—
a sharp scalpel—
that makes him win each time.
Temperance moves the beaded curtain
and enters the back of the shop.
Mr. Wang hangs a red sign on the door:
“I’ll be back soon,”
then approaches Temperance,
who is already lying on the table,
the altar of still-good organs,
of spare parts,
the Eden of old rich men,
the new pharaohs
with their assembled bodies,
mosaics of others—
new hearts, new livers,
special discount on a pair of kidneys,
single lung vacuum packed,
each with a label in Chinese
and a price in US dollars.
“What do you sell this time?”
Temperance offers what’s left of her still-working flesh:
eyes, uterus . . . heart.
Even if she does not come out alive
without that engine in her chest,
under the faded flowers of the yellow dress,
it might be worth . . .
She can make a lot of money,
enough to pay tuition for her daughter, Mary.
Seventeen years old, blue eyes like headlights.
Mary sells herself whole
on the highway.
Temperance pretends to know nothing about that.
She believes that the lights of airplanes
are real UFOs,
and that the fishnet stockings, the high heels,
the dress that reveals a breast
and has a heart-shaped cutout on the behind
are part of a Halloween costume
that Mary used to wear as a child.
Candy turning into green, sticky dollars.
Halloween every night.
Mr. Wang takes his rate table
and the booklet with customer requests.
“Well,” he mumbles.
especially a thirty-six-year-old one,
but the heart . . . it’s as good as gold.”
Temperance closes her eyes.
Mr. Wang understands and inserts a rubber tube
into her mouth.
“You will not feel . . . anything.
Just think about diving, slowly,
into the small ocean I’m creating for you.”
The scalpel sinks into Temperance’s chest.
The bell on the door rings.
Death moves the beaded curtain,
enters the back of the store,
and sits on an iron stool.
Waiting.
Mary gets in a Mercedes.
A rich client, what luck!
The car leaves, fast as a rocket,
heading toward the woods.
Mary looks at the man, he is young and cute.
He’s wearing jeans. They’re swelling between the legs.
“What do you like?”
the girl whispers.
The man glances at her blue headlights,
then he slips his hand into his pocket,
moving his knife sideways.
His jeans are tight. That stuff makes him uncomfortable.
He smiles: “I like your eyes.”
The car brakes, raising dust.
THE COCKROACH KING
Josh doesn’t live in the clouds,
he doesn’t throw lightning,
he hasn’t a long white beard
or an armed escort of angels
with duck wings and loaded Kalash
nikovs.
Josh isn’t a god.
He’s a five-hundred-pound king
surrounded by a court of cockroaches.
His apartment is in Nashville
(where Johnny Cash was born),
Humphreys Street, near Gabby’s Burgers and Fries.
It’s his Eden, a hunting ground,
his leather armchair in front of the TV,
with a huge bucket of chips on either side.
It’s his throne,
his Nirvana with footrest.
The King’s cockroaches
are many, are trained,
are smart.
Long lines of insects,
without butler uniforms,
run back and forth
from the kitchen to the living room,
carrying on their joined shells,
as a Roman legion would,
food for the King
who can no longer get up from the armchair.
The man mumbles.
A fat cockroach with three antennas,
the team leader, takes the lead of the faster platoon
to bring his monarch
the pot with the boy’s stew,
the one who delivered the pizza last night,
delivering even himself,
stuffed with fear, crispy.
The King loves leftovers—
We don’t throw away anything in this house!
The row of insects, a living, quivering mosaic, carries on its back
the flaky dish, with the boy’s head
already gnawed.
The younger, smaller cockroaches
are behind the group,
pulling two boxes of ketchup.
The floor looks like a great mandala
ready to dissolve at any time:
the dirty, orange carpets,
ruins of slippers and chicken bones,
mayonnaise snakes, salty rattles,
hundreds of cardboard boxes
balanced on the walls
containing large, charred halos of pizza.
Chaos meets Perfection
in the realm of Josh.
Van Gogh couldn’t have done it better,
giving life to matter,
transforming colors and flavors.
When the dish finally arrives
on the King’s knees,
someone knocks on the door—
Police! Open it, you bastard!
The cops break down the door,
waving rifles and pistols.
They seem like alien creatures
with their infrared goggles.—
Don’t move!
Are you kidding? Josh thinks.
The cockroaches surround their monarch,
forming a perfect circle,
a moat of themselves.
The insects growl, blaspheme,
if you know how to listen.
Josh stretches his arm toward the bucket
to grab a handful of chips,
but the cop with the star on the collar
is nervous and fires two shots.
The bullets pierce the singlet of the King,
getting bogged down in the layer of fat that is