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Siesta

Spencer Reece

Oh people not mine

what is it we can hear

the old custodian

coddles the tin box

in the empty church

the ex-monk clips

his lime tree just so

my soiled skin flensed

from my uniform

Jesus said to them

oh ye of little faith

Ayamonte is golden

the sun rakes over us

meticulous and slow

a mutt with cataracts

licks its parts ticking

Portugal lies exposed

on her soft cheap cot

passive and docile unlike

that bull that is Spain

the sea’s lips scold me

in that Spanish way

gentle and yet firm

nothing here is mine

Spencer Reece is the author of The Road to Emmaus (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014).

Themes

About this Poem

“I began this poem in the south of Spain one hot summer day, in a little town called Ayamonte. Siesta is such a religious sacrosanct act here in Spain and I wanted to memorialise it. Also my poetic Spanish hero Antonio Machado wrote a poem once with this title, and I think of him so often here and wonder what he'd think of Spain now so I wanted to summon him to my table.”

—Spencer Reece

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More by this poet

San Sebastian

Still singing in my cell
of succulents, staked by a man
who fled. Nothing personal.
How often I get that wrong…
I move on—

some man
is always fleeing, and that
is never personal. The longer
I go the fewer notes I need.
My torso a sort of hotel.
Martyrdom bores me.
My hook-ups a new flamenco—

Spencer Reece

2016

Then

I was a full-time house sitter. I had no title.
I lived in a farmhouse, on a small hill,
surrounded by 100 acres. All was still.
The fields were in a government program
that paid farmers to abandon them.

Spencer Reece

2004

Ponies

I remember the ponies in the distance.
I remember you talked of a war, no two wars, a failed marriage--
discretely, without force or grandeur.
This was before they amputated your leg, before the stroke.
You rolled your r’s, spoke of Oxford,
recalled driving in the Quaker ambulance unit in China,
where you saw an oil drum filled with severed limbs.
Pleased to have your approval, I rarely spoke.
You were like a father to me and I was grateful.
I remember the ponies behind the fence, muscular,
breathing, how they worried the grass.
The ponies said: This day astounds us.

Spencer Reece

2004

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Siesta

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