By ANGIE MACRI
Danger, as in strangers, men or women;
as in twisters at night when you couldn’t
see them coming; as in the machines
that made work so easy you forgot
to watch what you were doing,
Tracing dusty footprints, you can be led
to fornix, to tombs, the circus and bars,
to my lupan, my cell, my earthen bed;
what waits is not secret—see what I are?
I’m not a barmaid, an actor or slave;
I’m not being cursed because I had sinned—
I’m earning my keep in this grisly trade.
For that I am traif, but come along in.
I’ll lead you to places you’ve never had;
to hell in a basket: one bloody as.
By ZORAIDA BURGOS
Translated by PETER BUSH
OUR VERY OWN EQUILIBRIUM
Wearily, but firmly, we twisted
our feeble trunks
around a stump
alone but not sad amid other trees,
entangled roots
clinging till the last
to our rough stony ground.
We grow two shoots
bringing hope to our landscape
when a ruddy wing on the bare
mountain horizon
heralds a threatening wind downstream.
Thoughtfully, carefully,
we’ve been turning our mud,
our clay, bare-fingered,
with the strength of truth,
of harsh truth dead reborn,
our hands tightly clasped.
And nothing, no wind, no clouds, no rain, no threats
will shake
the stump, clay or mud, and these shoots,
for wearily,
but firmly,
we’ve made them our own.
It stood beside the dining hall and taller than the dining hall
by half again as much, and in all weather, against all skies
it was like a lit synapse, wild. We went in and out under it
The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog
knows one big thing.
—Archilochus, 680–645 BCE
Well, Archilochus, I guess your lyre
might help me mock, and maybe mourn, this loss—
today I broke the frosted Elvis glass
I bought at Graceland when the symposium
of poets toured the mansion.
I said nothing and thought
of the Foro Romano—
its basilicas, temples, arches—
imagined being by the Lapis Niger
confessing by the tomb of Romulus
and listening to Livia.
Rome, New York
after Austin Araujo
In my favorite picture of you, the hair blown across
your face, obscuring your face, it’s easy to make out,
deep in the distance, the hangers of the air force base
classified as a superfund site, a sprawling huddle
of buildings expanding out into the extent of the valley.
Was it all simply adornment,
watching the rain fall from the sun,
or the mourning dove that carried
the wallet-sized photo in its beak?
Looking back, it was true—
I had stopped seeing the beauty in it all,
living from moment to moment,
looking to be granted some small sense
of pleasure, as if by respite or charity.
Maryland, 2020
My partner wears the panopticon,
and I carry the rope. Hungry
for the rush, the chase, we locate
the missing black calf
about two-tenths of a mile
from East Silver Spring.
He’s wearing a long-sleeve
jersey T-shirt, navy blue jeans.
We are stretching towards each other,
words tangling. The words can’t always
be torn apart. Sometimes you
are ти. Sometimes we touch.
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