#cartagena
You measure time by smoking cigarettes,
out on balcony where sunlight strokes
the wooden panels soaked from the rain
cast down from skies that are shades of blue
too beautiful to paint on a borrowed canvas,
once belonging to your mother
who brought it over while on a voyage
through endless waters, cumbersome,
an eternity to get through.
You are in Cartagena. And he is in Virginia.
You and him face-time, looking into screens,
to see if you’ve both aged, to see why
you both no longer smile at sarcasm and punchlines.
You look for jobs on your laptop,
while piano melodies flutter in the background,
nothing coming up in your search,
worth wasting time for. You read books
by Viet Thanh Ngyuen, talk to strangers in bars,
and sleep in until noon in a plush bed built
from hands you’ve never touched.
The clock, ticking on the wall,
a heart still beating under a cage of ribs,
and you don’t want to step foot
on a cold floor where dust refuses to collect,
a path laid out to the balcony
where you stand over the railing,
a dream in your muddied mind, a hangover
perhaps, a change in mood,
a wrist being bent, in an angle
that is in the direction of a journey
you will never take without a hand,
a guide, a push to get you going.
You take a photograph with your phone
of the place where Gabo used to sit and eat,
and drink and write. And you tell yourself,
“What a pretty desk, look how it stands upright.”
May 22, 2018
May 22, 2018 at 7:34 PM UTC
Julio Flórez
You do not know how to love; are you trying to
give me warmth with your sad look?
Love is worth nothing without storms,
Without tempest... love does not exist!
And yet, you say you love me?
No, it is not love that moves you towards me:
Love is a sun made of flames,
and in the sun the snow never sets.
Love is a volcano, it’s lightning, it’s light,
and it must be devouring, intense,
It must be a hurricane, it must be a summit...
It must rise up to God like incense!
But you think love is cold?
That must it be in forever blank eyes?
With your anemic love... go, well go,
Go to the ossuary to make the dead fall in love!
Translated by Samuel Flórez
Mar 1, 2025
Mar 1, 2025 at 12:07 AM UTC