The Latin singer's song
Sings the strain of Spanish air against the lay
Of Mexican land, as the American's letter home
Figures out the self-effacing character
Of alienation in broken English, where the babble
Of the fountain drowns out the chanting of the breeze
With the pigeons' gibberish.
The tang of indigenous salt
Bites the tip of the foreign tongue that licks the lip
Of aboriginal glass, while the sting of native Sun
On strange skin burns fevers in the palm of the hand
That fingers the steam off a bottle of local liquor
From neck to mouth, and the whine of bitter spirits
Exhausts its fumes.
So the guitar strikes its chord
As the singer hits her pitch. Though each phrase marks the passage
Of breath into essence, the writer hears only the spaces
Between the lines, where every language is speechless,
All music unheard of, and each stray mark draws its blank
Over the twisting of a word, as each bent note, recorded,
Tells the wringing out of tune,
Till the change sounds the silence
Of the bar beyond measure, and the only way to hold
One's peace is to keep quiet. And yet the sweetest nothing
Is the uncertain something in the fall
Of its movement to pieces, the timeless reverberation
Of structures decomposing, like the run
Of disappearing ink.
The green-eyed mermaid you dreamt of,
Wreathed in garlands of pink conch shells, breaching
On the curve of a dolphin's fin, to keen you a love-song
Blown toneless through the roar, like a sea-trumpet channeling
The flow of crossed-currents into an engulfing stream
Of sub-tropical winds, traces her ghostwritten outline
Across the waves' lapping foam,
That you might know the meaning
Of insignificance. The trick of her voice
Is the catch in your throat, as the spray on the rocks
Is the echo in his leaves. And the play of her scales
Against the spin of her tail forms a pattern of speech
Like the hiss of the surf in the hollow of your ear, like the glaze
Of brine on your cheek . . .
So tonight, as the stars dance flamenco,
When the Sun on the sea is the flesh of an orange slice
Torn dripping off the rind, and tossed in a bowl
Of bloodthirsty sangria, and the Moon in the sky
Is a lime peel twisting on the sugar-laced rim
Of a margarita pitcher, comets leaking like burst seeds
And shredded pulp down the sides—
Then both you and your words
Will come to your senses. Now, the song played out, the singer
Laid to rest, the letter's telltale signs of the better
Left unsaid (and so shall remain nameless) find the writer
Lost in utter mistranslation, as his sheet music's page
Goes up in cigar smoke, and a love's distant relation
Breaks off in mid-air.
Poetry
Message in a Bottle,
Incommunicado, and
Il Mio Tesoretto
322 Review publishes provocative emerging and established artists. Conceived and operated by former Rowan University graduate students of the Master of Arts in Writing Program, 322 Review is aggressively seeking the best fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and mixed media works of visual art.
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