Listed by Duotrope
a peer-reviewed quarterly journal on literature
E-ISSN 2457-0265
Poetry
Douglas K Currier
Volume:
8
2024-06-01
Issue:
2
Night VII
Night again. She gets in late,
sheds the halter top and jean shorts,
short enough to have no home
for pockets, takes a cold shower.
Activity around the one kiosko
on the block finished, everything
locked down except the dogs
and the whores, no more money
for a shared beer, a coke, she goes
to her single bed, naked under
a rotating fan that will work until
a rolling blackout parks over the barrio.
Piropos
And the black branches trailing in the living water
stirred slowly with the change of air.
Piropos, you said, El aire les hace piropos.
“Next to Nothing” Paul Bowles
The breeze whispers, and who doesn’t
appreciate a compliment from far away,
carried in countless waves to the ear.
It’s not that we’re beautiful; it’s that we’re
wanted – un piropo: the catcall, spontaneous,
shouted compliment, vulgar suggestion.
The way the breeze caresses us – shifts our shirts,
tousles our hair, dries our neck – of course,
that’s love of the sort we’ve longed for.
The wind is love, courts us, whispers promises
and obscenities, slaps leaves to get our attention,
but we’re married to the earth, her claim.
Reflection
I am the wrong direction, the dead nerve-end,
the unfinished scream.
“Next to Nothing” Paul Bowles
I am your reflection, the morning after indiscretion in lurid light shared with doubt.
I am in your bed, exhausted from using you, the parts that can be used under the guise of love.
I am your fetid thoughts of age, of what’s coming – your swiftly expiring use to anyone.
I am the fourth symptom – a weariness bred of life, fatigue, the child of constant intercourse,
the rhythmic fucking of Hope, by her brother, Despair.
I am the worry in your eyes, your listless hair, the lines about your mouth, age spots
on your skin, the droop of your breasts, your graying cunt.
I am your bad habits, your wrong men, your awful choices, your paltry, cowardly vices, your
indifferent indiscretions, your forgotten transgressions, your incipient, silly, sluttiness.
I am your eye shadow, your underwire bra, your lip gloss, your bottled scent, your
self-delusion, your imagined happy ending.
Friday
Today bleeds into tomorrow,
just on the water rings yesterday left on the desk.
Every Friday, though not identical, resembles every
other, the entire Friday family – the anticipatory,
ingenuous drool, as the light dries and darkness beckons.
Ah, the aftershave – Old Spice, the one evening we smelled
of our fathers, without the beer-soaked weariness of the week.
And the soft mystery of girls, and the unpredictable
alcohol that older boys, men, would buy for us
or that we stole from the coolers of corner stores.
I can tell you about Fridays. I dated one for a while – moist
lips, wet tongue, soft breasts – back when we closed
our eyes for everything not Saturday morning.
Monday, that bitch, wouldn’t even give us the time of day.
Art
Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
“Lady Lazarus” Sylvia Plath
Even unsought, death is a creative effort,
and it is important to accept the clichéd lament,
the stilted pésame, and any wordless grief.
We know we have lost a color, a note, a word
no longer uttered with that precise authority.
Often, choice of medium is short notice.
Are we oils that take time to finish
or the spontaneous acrylics, best as a smudged charcoal,
a sharper ink, a simple pencil sketch, watercolor boceto?
We’ve largely lost the habit of singing our deaths
– a simple tune of the lived – set as we are to leave
at least a trace, a mound of earth that signifies
something buried here. Kaddish, native tribal death songs
belong too much to the wind. We’ve learned to commemorate
even though it always wastes to vulgarity and artifice.
We’ve learned to be satisfied with lip service
and false emotion – an eternity of art.
Purgatory
We, who believe in second and third chances,
in do-overs, in mulligans of all sorts, must believe in purgatory.
God-given hand up, boost from below that gets us past,
above even, our sins, into the celestial. Atonement is an end
in itself, but not without a carrot, a reward, time off for good
behavior, good intentions. We’re sorry, sincerely, to be dead
but still called to account for those petty vices we thought
everyone had and thus were normal, everyday occurrence.
.
Pain, boredom, bliss wash out to a threadbare sameness in the end.
If Hell is other people, life is Purgatory, and death – Heavenly.
Summer
Verano, ya me voy. Y me dan pena
las manitas sumisas de tus tardes.
Llegas devotamente; llegas viejo;
y ya no encontrarás en mi alma a nadie.
“Verano” César Vallejo
It’s only after summer leaves,
we know the extent of her lies
– long, languorous days, sun
and promise of sun, optimism
for the next idyllic, the next
pause in an otherwise hectic year.
No one ages in summer; no one dies
– all is corrected for temperature
and skies blue, sunsets red, early
mornings with a ghost of moon.
And summer nights, where a soft
darkness lingers, hides lovers in
the open air, prey to stars
and breezes and a leering old moon.
Summer leaves tired, love-spent,
tucking bits of belief and hope
into her bikini bottom.
Sleeping with death
We have slept with death all our lives.
“Seen from Above” Jack Gilbert
Hers is the form we feel in bed when we wake
at 3:00 to converse with our watching dead.
Hers is the shape on the pillow -- mornings
before sunrise. We leave cab fare on the night table.
She never takes it. She watches us dress, notes
the age spots and thinning hair, thickening bulk
and confusion as we step into our sockless shoes,
sit to pull on trousers, tuck in our t-shirts.
Ah, but at night, she locks the house, she tucks
us in, rocks us to sleep, finds an extra blanket,
sings of mothers and those who used to love us.
About the Poet
Douglas K Currier holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Pittsburgh and writes poetry in English and Spanish. He has published in several journals: Comstock Review, Café Review, Main Street Rag, Stone, Poetica Revie, and Erothanatosamong others. Author of four collections of poetry in Spanish and two in English: “Senorita Death” and “Death Studies.” He lives with his wife in Winooski, Vermont, and Corrientes, Argentina.