Image by eleda 1. Reproduced under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
CONSTANTINOPLEOver the Bosphorus Bridge a fisherman
has set up four fishing lines
sits down tunes the radio
stares at the pedestrians It’s drizzling and it’s cold
Drops on the water
The universe
One of the fishhooks takes
The force that unites everything and unties it
Puffs of grief shock slowness of asphyxia Now the man has the fish
shakes the air with its body
Seagulls gather round
He throws the fish into the sky
its scales the metallic gleam
The small eyes peruse at the sea the relief
just before but gaining noteworthy altitude
suddenly a beak rips its fins
tears apart its body guzzles
in one second the remainsIn secret someone was thinking of God
Cruel fisherman of menMEXICAN DEMOCRACYanother corpse found in a black bag by a body the wind a bridge two blocks absent: a spiky head open eyes in other news: on the weekend thirty executed coup de grâce some of them with torture marks the failed rescue of a kidnap a finger a ring a roll of newspaper in other news: the political campaigns ended and started there’s qualified will in Washington this trimester the migratory reform focuses on poverty welfare happiness far absent a bus’s mufflerthen silencethey open the black bag the stench of rotten flesh:a new born small girlThis piece appears in The Lifted Brow #32. Get your copy here.
Alí Calderón (Mexico,1982) is a poet, publisher, and literary critic and the director of the International Poetry Festival of Mexico City. Mario Bojórquez,Mexican poet and translator, is the author of Pájaros sueltos, and Diván de Mouraria,El deseo postergado and Memorial de Ayotzinapa, among others.
Source: theliftedbrow.com