Five Poems
Essay and art by Virgil Suárez
Dig Deep
Put your ear to the track and hear the rumbling
of our modern age approaching, smoke billowing heavenward.
Birds swoop and tumble dead out of ashen skies, poisoned air
in the lungs. Arid earth, caked and cracked like pieces
of shopping bags strewn outside abandoned malls and shopping
centers. Ask not who to blame for the man with hands deep in pockets.
Failed stock market confetti raining down on Wall Market Street roofs.
A cat scurries with a rat bigger than a possum.
We’ve been lobotomized, infected with consuming, filling self-storage
units with our desires, nothing to take beyond.
We love by sickly light, our lives speeding down the tracks
toward oblivion, erasure, and undignified grift.
The Way the Earth Smells
Out of the plains endlessly rocking dust and tumble weeds,
the cow birds huddle next to the carcass of a dead horse.
Out here where the big sky promises rain but never delivers,
a man cradles his blue-eyed son, thumb in his mouth, charol
shoes dusty and smeared with tractor grease. Where to go
from this embrace of a man defeated by time and space.
Heracles of poisoned masculinity, the night mother cried
and whimpered in soft moans. When you see your mother
on her knees praying, bruises like shadows on her face.
What drives a man into the corners of the night where not
even the moon dares to witness the abuse. The smell of bloody
earth pervasive in the hands, hair, shoes bound for a dead end
that blues with the absence of forgiveness.
The Ikhthyes
A villager hefts the huge river fish
on his back, its head large enough
for the man to fit his head in its gills
for balance. The other men
at the docks applaud and whistle
unaware the man has a sharp dagger
under his rope belt. Out of the foam,
a birth of Aphrodites, this time a male
child who is not well in the head,
eats dirt and twigs and lives
in the shade of a tamarind.
Sweet goo under his tongue,
words forming slow and deliberate
to speak the name of such feat.
The way we sacrifice to feed out blood
kin. The wife receives the fish
like an answered prayer.
She scales and guts the fish
while the man drinks a cold beer.
The boy holds the scales
to the light, a shimmering
that reminds him of dragonfly
wings. The chickens peck
at the bits of guts. Everything
the river gives doesn’t go
to waste, neither does this
moment as the flies swarm
over the patio table. The night
coming in fast and quieting.
Folies-Dramatiques
Something about a flowered hat
and the satisfied smile, the way
her cheeks dimple under the sun,
this woman with broad shoulders,
ready to act. But there is pain
in her eyes. Her mother committed
her to a hospital for women who
returned from college a bit wild
and inappropriate and in those days
a mad doctor went around the country
lobotomizing folks who were unsteady
in their lives. Now every morning she
dresses and stands by her porch greeting
passersby. Good morning to you too,
they say and move on. The men
mistake the twinkle in her eyes for flirting.
She is ready for some lemonade
and cookies and the endless rocking
on the porch chair.
Sunshine delights her to no end.
Villanery
