After Eden. Harold J. Recinos

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СКАЧАТЬ in the

      middle of vast seas. the

      future made last week by

      the president’s tweets spread

      ignorance across the land,

      conceited tales ringed with

      the scum of nothing good

      done, and citizens swayed

      by rabbit punching lies to

      live quietly in these times.

      the history the future will

      bitterly speak, the stories

      from the public squares, the

      marches on town streets, the

      abominable citizens who paraded

      hate covered with white sheets,

      the elected idiots who came to

      their defense, will ask of every

      resident whose precious life was

      dressed with utter fright what

      comes next?

      The Garden

      in my childhood on the

      streets, I saw in the ripe

      hour of each day things

      spoken about truth in the

      gloomy basement of the

      church that were clearly

      not true. I passed through

      many sanctuaries, where

      the good folks wasted dreams,

      denied the long lines of sorrow

      claiming their kids and waited

      for the coming hour to lower

      beloved innocence with heaps

      of rotting flowers beneath the

      earth. in loud hollow tones, I

      heard voices by men trained to

      think morally exhorting broken

      hearts on the block to wait for

      coming heaven and the aromatic

      blossoming of the stony road. after

      all these years, the wailing has not

      stopped, the good news yet only

      sweeps away the dust, priests are

      glad in useless prayer, academics

      have their cottage industry studying

      our streets and Spanish eyes keep

      searching for the promised land

      confessing it’s just too damn far

      from here.

      The Painter

      woke up to hop the subway

      downtown to get lost in an

      art museum to look at oils

      that imagined the unfinished

      work of God, stroll the rooms

      with creaky floors the grey world

      doesn’t visit, stare at the Picasso

      using colors and lines to trick my

      eyes, until a word jumped up to

      say something about the beginning

      of things. I wanted to find somebody

      to tell of an old woman on the block

      living on the ground floor of Lefty’s

      building who painted at night. She

      must have had a special set of eyes

      to see things in the dark, to have the

      night come to her like water rushing

      down a steep hill, then capture on a

      canvas details thrown her way by

      whispered ghostly streets. I looked

      for the associate curator of the cubist

      wing, while repeating a few lines in my

      head about having him come down to

      the barrio to have a look at the paintings

      this Abuela boxed and placed in a room

      with a window facing the Westchester

      Avenue. I found him talking casually

      about Goya, Picasso, Orozco, Caravaggio,

      and Manet in a near empty room, a small

      voice in me said what the hell you can’t lose

      anything inviting the curator to visit the

      block to talk with an old painter woman

      about art—so I did.

      Devotion

      the evening shades are creeping

      away as you sing morning prayer

      expecting some great Spirit to drift

      nearby with greetings. you lean to

      whisper in the wind something about

      being put a long way from fear in the

      unknown coming day that threatens

      frail bodies with workplace raids that

      never СКАЧАТЬ