PORTRAIT OF MADONNA, SAINTS AND BARN] Poem by WINGSTON GONZÁLEZ

PORTRAIT OF MADONNA, SAINTS AND BARN you encounter
camera in hand, you embrace the salt of the universe
you reproduce it, rewrite it, you deconstruct
the sound of water when a body despairs

rheas running through breathtaking tundra
destruction of breasts, presences fixed, you ask
obvious questions, exact location, meaning, clean words
on leaves of grass, exalted, a voice asks
why would a rhea run through tundra if i hardly
know what tundra is, if hardly, i've imagined rhea, hardly
its incomplete image, its trace of plague, that
portrait that breaks this poem, the little hermeneutics
of the difficult plenitude of kisses, of the photographs
on the wall of your room, your memories
full of resonances dead, what
what does it mean to be full
if you have to break it all, what does the greenery mean
behind door and cloud of cigarette smoke two centimeters from the ceiling
drawing a body, drying skin that sweats
shade of the nosferatu, british teenagers
phantom pub of Yorkshire, damned suburb
monstrous possibility, leaning
on the frontspiece of a film that we abandon
to phantoms that never saw these towns, inside
the belly of a battle against sunken image
on cheap sofas, technicolor tv, at the side of heritage
the misery of distant relative whose skull sticks
through pant zipper as the water beats against
your memories, dispersed, the time irregular
the slight simulacrum of translation that sounds out the words
that i write for you, untranslatable animal
when in O brother where art thou that same man
shines on bended knee, inside the song
of three black gravediggers shoveling rain far away
far away
from the place where you encounter him, redundant, unnecessary
cheerful bar and dark piety, irritable adolescent insolation
you throw at him
lasso, telephone call, plasma screen
at him who is not valiant, who is not brave, who will never
summon the courage to get drunk and lose
the control that remains of life; flowerpot at the ocean
or hippopotamus who facing a coffin speaks of love
now i don't know, life, now i don't know where to raise
the filthy boy who at two in the afternoon
wakes up one sunday and thinks
about the offended soul of this city, about this march
that exhibits the magnetized spectrum
of my hair of water, hair of light, hair of municipal placidity
incendiary invoice that dances like the sea

like a trumpet of happiness in a town
that does not speak highly
of happiness