Essays, Radio, Interviews  >  Muses Afflict Us With Desire  >  #26

#26

this is the poem he told me to write

under the splash of the moonlight, and he wasn’t speaking
his native Spanish/Aymara/French/Italian
no, the words came out in English so I’d really understand

like go write a poem, he said, get out of my hair
his bald spot buff like the gap gawking from
atop a power plant from whence escapes raison d'être,
disaparecida by a Ford Falcon and M-14s
all memory of who-when-why drugged and dumped into the ocean

la mezzaluna in the sky, its slippage to the sidewalk came
out of the blue, and with it a turnabout in international relations
in Spanish/Aymara/French/Italian -- and English

cun sañasauca’ha? from the dawn of words, it is,
a poem appears