Mi Abuela Panchita

At First She Came To Me Pure

   At first she came to me pure,
dressed only in her innocence;
and I loved her as we love a child.

   Then she began putting on 
clothes she picked up somewhere;
and I hated her, without knowing it.

   She gradually became a queen,
the jewelry was blinding ...
What bitterness and rage!

   ... She started going back towards nakedness.
And I smiled.

   Soon she was back to the single shift
of her old innocence.
I believed in her a second time.

   Then she took off the cloth
and was entirely naked ...
Naked poetry, always mine,
that I have loved my whole life!

by Juan Ramon Jimenez
translated by Robert Bly

Sister

Sister,
what should I have done?

Your laughter
unraveled our Master's Lent.
Your Mongolian eyes
shut out the light

(slits of black stone).


(Where was our Savior?
Is this what older brothers
should be?)

As you rose --
the final arc --
day unveiled 
the balance of God's hand.
Night scurried
into the thicket
of the wicked world.

(What was its name --
oh, Great God?)

You imbued me
with power.
I became a Danite,
son of Manoah,
and faced him
with an ass's bone.
I would not let him grind.
Sister, not this time,
I would not let him cleave.

On the day of rest,
I brought you home
and prayed for you --
your resurrection.
But you were lost,
entombed in clay,
and I was left
with my laments.

Now,
a man,
full of iniquity,
I await your knock.
Sister,
please don't weep.
Day is done,
and twilight is a thousand candles
God burns for you.

The Bones of My Father

1

There are no dry bones

here in this valley. The skull

of my father grins

at the Mississippi moon

from the bottom

of the Tallahatchie,

the bones of my father

are buried in the mud

of these creeks and brooks that twist

and flow their secrets to the sea.

but the wind sings to me

here the sun speaks to me

of the dry bones of my father.

      2

There are no dry bones

in the northern valleys, in the Harlem alleys

young / black / men with knees bent

nod on the stoops of the tenements

and dream

of the dry bones of my father.

And young white longhairs who flee

their homes, and bend their minds

and sing their songs of brotherhood

and no more wars are searching for

my father’s bones.

      3

There are no dry bones here.

We hide from the sun.

No more do we take the long straight strides.

Our steps have been shaped by the cages

that kept us. We glide sideways

like crabs across the sand.

We perch on green lilies, we search

beneath white rocks...

THERE ARE NO DRY BONES HERE

The skull of my father

grins at the Mississippi moon

from the bottom

of the Tallahatchie.

BY ETHERIDGE KNIGHT

i hear a stream

5 am
i hear a stream
birds bitching over the first worm
(been eating sardine for 2 hours
'til it stuck in my throat)

remember
when i first touched my queen's
pink wicked lips
she burned incense & faced mecca
said she loved arab flesh

i adore worldly stuff
don't you know
she smiled crookedly
a nasty grin
i swallowed her brown nipples
black olives

you're a salty fellow aren't you
she pushed me away
i flicked my tongue
rose on my tiptoes
expanded & swayed
bled desire through my eyes
i was horn toad
& she danced on the sharp tips
of my prehistoric horns

my lips ache
she moaned
& scratched her crotch
a smoke signal
dispersed too quickly
couldn't read it

on my way home
almost ran off the overpass
crushed the front right side
of my old ram
sat by the roadside
& watched
the tail of a lizard
wondered
if it was my spirit
frantic to escape

must be 5 am
down a dark ally
between titsworth & seminary
old man jesús
drags his cart of aluminum cans
somewhere
i hear a stream

but it could be fire

Pepe

saturdays
pepe is suave
with his victor mature hat
tan khakis
brown winged tipped shoes
durango shirt
a camel suspended
between his lips

saturdays
after work
pepe drives to the city
goes to la taqueria
were he eats tacos de lengua
with nopal & queso blanco
drinks cerveza y tequila
argues white sox & cubs baseball
with strangers
plays rancheras & polkas & cumbias
dances with young girls from mexico
guatemala
honduras
colombia

pepe always invites the girls
to el cine
takes in a double feature
of el santo
el santo in the diabolical mind
el santo in the mummies of guanajuato

on saturdays
pepe sits on the bed of his truck
& listens to foreign voices emanating
from the dim lights of blue island
disconnected footsteps
of aliens
exotic smells of the city
of big shoulders
earth settling
into a peculiar rhythm

on saturdays
pepe speaks to the moon
knows how close it is to him & his family
knows how far they are from one another
pepe tells of el enmascarado de plata
of the vengeance of crying women
of killers from other worlds
of vampire women
he speaks of many things
but never of love or family

pepe speaks long into the evening
till twilight falls
his eyes lost on the moon
his heart roaming the cobblestones
of guanajuato

LAST TOAST

I drink to our ruined house
To the evil of my life
To our loneliness together
And I drink to you—
To the lying lips that have betrayed us,
To the dead-cold eyes,
To the fact that the world is brutal and coarse
To the fact that God did not save us.

by Anna Akhmatov
Translated from the Russian by Katie Farris and Ilya Kaminsky