sweat&allspice cento1
after Eduardo C. Corral
you breathed in
whispers; God is gracious,
_______god is touching me; no:
A vulture; a pillar of salt
_______is nothing like a lighthouse,
_______a girl asleep beneath a fishing net
_______a moonlit downpour, God’s skeleton.
i pinch & pull until
_______i am holding
_______sparrows
_______three men
_______your red wool cap
Day after day spent shaping
_______the moon
_______like stigmata
_______in the dark
Imagine: coal, plow,
_______a corpse-colored river
_______the aroma
_______of sweat&allspice
the mirror shatters
_______into milk,
_______there’s a glacier gutter
____________________________miracle
gently he hammers gold into a sentence gently
_______they broke open
_______my body
_______with their fists
you breathed in
_______the aroma
_______of sweat&allspice
you breathed in
1. This cento includes lines from Corral’s poems “To Robert Hayden,” “Sentence,” “To a Straight Man,” “Ceremonial,” “Cayucos,” “All the Trees of the Field Shall Clap Their Hands,” “In Colorado My Father Scoured and Stacked Dishes,” and ‘Testament Scratched Into a Water Station Barrel (Translation #11),” as well as lines he posted on Twitter.↩
a guy driving by calls me a fag
& i wonder how he knew
_____________________my heart was an egg
_____________________shell-all-speckled blue
_____________________with red-orange-sunset yolk
& the people on the street
_____________________who have heard || who have seen
_____________________this guy || drive by || shouting
_____________________my name || they eye me uncomfortable
& unsure
_____________________if they heard & saw
_____________________what they thought
_____________________they heard & saw
& i don’t react
_____________________because i know
_____________________what i heard & saw
_____________________& i know
_________________________________it’s nothing.
but the poppies & blood & feathers & bird bones
_____________________i carry in my pockets,
_____________________i spread like salt
_____________________behind my feet
& the people on the street
_____________________breathe,
_____________________relaxing lungs around the eggs
_____________________inside their own chests
& we can all pretend
_____________________nothing was seen
_____________________& no-one was
_________________________________heard
the sea & the foam
i apologized to the sun
_____________________for having skin
but still seafoam came
_____________________to cut my belly open
_____________________to birth my own intestines
_____________________to divine with them a future
crown
but still seafoam came
_____________________to crack my throatskin
_____________________to pull quetzal feathers out
_____________________to decorate their pastries
& plates & plates
but still seafoam came
_____________________soft & white & full
_____________________of good intent
_____________________but
___________________________still
but still seafoam
_____________________still a wave’s crest,
_____________________cliff’s edge, top of a mountain
_____________________of good intent bearing down
_______________________________________________________over me
Magnolia Cemetery
call me to the house
of the unheard
take the kudzu of whispers
from the windows & say each name
like a prayer for the dead & for those who survive
Christ-like hung up from the massacre of history
the mudwater grows the same as weeds
horseflies mingle with moths
even tombstones rot
& history is
____________the ghost pervading these trees
i’ve heard hell is the absence of god
dark the absence of light
death the absence of life
is grief then the absence of joy
or how do i call
___________________emptiness
__________________________?
