|
LIGHT, YOGHURT, STRAWBERRY MILK
Light
you see
then hear
-- from my pillow the bedroom
window, now and then,
twitches
(onethousandONE
onethousandTWO
onethousandTHREE)
the sky letting loose a distant
ripple of sound
-- another electric night
in June
while in the current of the Oder River trees
are like toothpicks
as cattle circle ponds once pastures, banks over-
flowing
as precious books
drip dry
on clothelines
in the Czech Republic, the summer
freakish . . . And me
sleepless in Spain, the words neuron synapse dendrite
skittering across my mind --
the dome of the sky is night's brain
before I rise, reaching
for the switch, sliding
into slippers
and head for the fridge, remembering
what I wondered as a child
whenever I opened and shut
their doors: what happens when I
close it, does it stay
on? . . . and what I would normally
do -- peel off
the aluminum seal, slip
the spoon in ignoring
the layer of liquid
on top, begin to eat -- I do
different this time: am I thinking
of Father Dan, who, back home,
had buried her?
how in the months that followed
I watched him raise a chalice
every morning
to his lips
so that I raise this cup of yoghurt to mine,
whiffing the flavor
a second before savoring it? -- is it this "juice"
on my tongue
only?
or how the two inter-
lace?: the smell,
the taste
of strawberry -- the rabbit's
ears
drooping on the pink
cartoony label, the straw's
neck like a tiny
accordion
the way it curls
out of my mouth, my eyes
crusty with sleep --
still blinded
by the switched-on light
while she
crouching at my bed
is reaching for the glass
as the slurping abates
-- getting a little boy
ready for the first grade
VIEW FROM THE PARK
A clear afternoon and the Bay Bridge
arcing
like a bow
to Treasure Island: a view
tourists could buy
at Fisherman's Wharf
but for the smudge
clouding the tip of the Pyramid -- panels
deflecting the sun glint
through, as if a beacon thinly shrouded in fog
were blinking a code across the city
to this green slope: a park named after
a mission
Dolores Dolores
-- it simmers on my tongue, is
Pains in Spanish, is
her name . . . And beyond the grass
a dark-haired woman
crouching
in the sand
saying to a small boy, ¡Sácate los dedos
de la boca! Take your fingers
out of your mouth!
|
Former editor of The Berkeley Poetry Review and a native of San Francisco, Francisco Aragon lived in Madrid, Spain from 1989-1998. He holds degrees in Spanish from UC Berkeley and New York University. He has published poems and translations in various journals, including Chelsea, ZYZZYVA, Modern Words, and Poetry Flash. He is currently in the Writing Program at the University of California in Davis, finishing his first collection of poems, whose working-title is Gravel & Grass. He recently won the Celeste Turner Wright Poetry Prize, sponsored by The Academy of American Poets.