Alfred Boas Poetry Prize, 2017

 

Black humor of history the sea is restless tonight hurled against breakers foaming at shoals fish flirting with

full moons squid dancing in lights whereas I am a pillar of salt a poor house of charred wood a tired

scummy city whose destruction is craved I told you cierra los ojitos Chiquita I told you I too have no idea

what the fuck is going on here all the land is dying around us the cangrejos popped open like mashed

flowers on the road the cranes stuck in the middle of their elliptic flight si te callas si paras de llorar

Chiquita you can hear the names of the trees being erased from the books you can hear someone getting

rich it sounds like someone getting off and then going home on the one good road in a nice big car and I

guess que esto es pa’ asegurar that they do not make off with your dreams as you damn that pueblito with

its dunes and dry lightning its cadaverous goats and soot riverbeds its closed at noon colmados and tight as

a closed fist mindset how the fuck would the tiguéres selling gasolina from glass coke bottles on the

highway’s costado know what a multinational is Chiquita even if one came and dumped fly ash in the bay

bone cancer common as street trash forty babies born with no arms just this year no llores instead let us

pray now at the hour of first dark when dogs bark cold stars out of the dusk los choked ríos will never be

rivers again the black Mercedes are coming to take us into the totalitarian night and there may yet be green

viboras thick as your thighs asleep in the dark ruins of your mother’s burnt out house.