EDUARDO ESCALANTE

Not just memory

There’s a fall
in the middle of life
the eyes will remind us.

Sit down.
A whole series of endurable things,
not to bend down, some dust but a hand to dig.
Things break out of their mass grave
over the debris that obsess us.

In memory, things happen for the second time,
for the third time. To set free a captive bird.
The anxious light always wears brand-new soles.

Ah Now in a whirl
these thoughts
I surely have in my memory, though

A simple catalog

the blinks to break the spell of daylight,
the vole is like a garden without wounds to dream,
the rubble of what I’ve known was true,
a garden embraces all afternoons,
a face does not miss up from inside
a hand to dig and get a ripening grain,
developed stars open us up with iron lines
what was ruined and was made wondrous,
the eyes vision sharpens the glass along the way,
the things breaking out of their mass grave,
feel by instinct faces blurred by a metal griddle,
not winning yours love by submission.

Now
Buzzing in the ear.
In an echoing body,
echoing light does fall.

Winter city

poor poor
too big shoes
he did not have hair he did not have hair
and walked towing a dog on a rope
lack of affection in the arm
with his dyed brain
he replaced himself with a mime
just a mime
living as a joke
he made a hole in the asphalt
another man crossed
he scratched his head
just a mime
living as a joke
but he made a hole
he laughed just a joke just a joke
and he finished the mime cycle
the city is always lenient

Eduardo Escalante, writer, and researcher living in Valparaíso, Chile; his work has been published in Grammar Poetry, The Stray Branch (forthcoming), Cooldnoon,  Slamchop, Indianapolis Review, Writer Resist, Constellations, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, Peacock Journal, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Arc Prose Poem Magazine, StylusLit, and elsewhere.