There Is No San Lenín
i know there’s no blue prince
like the beast of the apocalypse removed
separated by mountain chains lenín
is my revolution* my destination
into the clouds of his name
an all-ism forcing me into exile
lenín is thirst and craving
is the human man made true
/\ /\ /\ /\
and what fat chance this
cumulus sundry sums a bold thing lofty
enough to break regimen situated
in the garden of theoretical significance
the gocho is wearing an unusual hat
el timotocuica is bright and shy
*because of his revolutionary activities
lenín is exempt from sainthood
Copyright © 2022 by Chip Livingston. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 10, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.
“‘There Is No San Lenín’ completes a series of poems I wrote, Saints of the Republic, combining the researched biographies of various saints with the lives of real or imagined lovers—in this case a real one, a guapo Gocho/Timotocuica from the Andes of what is now Venezuela.”
—Chip Livingston
Chip Livingston
Chip Livingston is a mixed-blood Creek poet and the author of several books, including Saints of the Republic (Spuyten Duyvil, 2023) and Crow-Blue, Crow-Black (NYQ Books, 2012). He is also the editor of Love, Loosha: The Letters of Lucia Berlin and Kenward Elmslie (University of New Mexico Press, 2022).
A mentor in the low-residency MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Livingston lives in Montevideo, Uruguay.