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The Dream
—After a painting by Salvador Dali
There are a hundred swarming flies where there is an absence of lips. And though the
eyelids have been cemented shut, and though her hair may be a wig of limestone, and
though her neckline is hidden in the green mulch of the afternoon cave where
half-naked men wrestle in the strange darkness, and though the figure at the edge of
the painting is resting his head in disgust, and though the statue to his right peering
over him like an inquisitive owl is merely a reflection of the woman with sewn lips,
and though the light is dismal and fading into the dream, into the inventiveness of
sleep, and though the sleep itself belongs to the man slobbering on a pillow of his
worth—the fixed thermometer of his smile measuring the frequency of the dream,
and though the poem and the arc of sleep are cousins to the painting; the poet, the
artist, and the sleeper equally admit they have all been tortured by the flies.
Federico, You Worry Me
—for Federico Garc�a Lorca
Lorca, your tender voice has led me to question your arms. Maybe the milkman
stayed away, placed the bottle at your doorstep, rang the bell and left. Federico,
you worry me. There is a light traveling from one side of your face to the other, five
decades of work—culmination of a volume the heft of a loaf of bread. I tear into
your bosom and breathe. Later you shout verses over sea cliffs, watch your naked
words float, then leave for the ocean air. There is an arrogance about this. Lorca,
where did you leave your guitar? Where did you hide your manuscript? Who ate
from your invented alphabet? How did you find your way through the sweet chasm
of New York.? I've never been, yet I'm reminded of the vein of water that travels
upward, toward your solitary bedroom hovering over the Hudson like a displaced
moon. Maybe tonight your country will hear you, crying in that moist dark, that
impenetrable night you created yourself; landscapes of the homeless pissing in
Central Park, the children of Harlem prepping their eyes to be plucked by a stolen
moon.
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