Other People’s Poetry

 
Caminando

 
Take your moon face away
into the mountains of so many cities
and stare down
The invisible dance
over the cemetery of spirits
and spirits talk
La noche ojos grande
Green alleys to the future
Ways to the magic cave
You splits in the spring wind
You have the key to all the doors
Be strong
Eat fish
Drink rum.

 

Victor Hernandez Cruz 
 

Other People’s Poetry

 
Untitled
 
by Luciano Iacobelli
 
 
I was a child with little to say
 
my thoughts and words added nothing
to a world already complete

but in grade school
I ate a piece of chocolate given to me by a kid
who laughed when I swallowed it
ha ha he said
I gave you poison
and you’re gonna die

I believed him
despite assurances from others
that the boy had played a trick

I trembled and waited for my blood to freeze
and even though it never did
I feared the death inside me
was delayed
a lazy snake
sleeping in the shade of my organs

and so a little piece of candy reversed me
drew my eyes in towards my own workings
made me wordy and thoughtful
with a longwinded hunt
for a scaly darkness
that might
at any moment
strike
 
 

This poem was published as part of Luciano Iacobelli’s collection, Painting Circles (Quattro Books, 2012).  
 

Pressure

 
Valves, clamps, tubes, washers.
At night especially,
I can feel them knocking
under my fingers. They are tender
and immediate as their burden,
their weaknesses are slight enough
to be disastrous: an incidental
whisper, the brush of brick
or bone; how many secrets
would come flooding forth?

 
Rocco de Giacomo

 
As appeared in Existere, Vol. 30, No. 2, 2011.