The Brooklyn Rail

INTERSTICES

An invitation
To become
spectator or coward

I have come to love this position
beneath fog and smog
between countries
⸺ intermediary of culture

You can also witness
without the filth on me
⸺ artistry

When is art an ethical proposition?
always I hope always
⸺ desire

I wrote my most truthful poem
The story of a scorpion colony’s exile
An editor rejected it, stating: I love the surrealism of the piece

Two things occur:
I miss my desert & I scream fuck that magazine
⸺ cowardice

When I was a child
only eleven, split from my favorite carob tree
I murdered my accent in front of a TV

Years earlier, I witnessed a military
assault on live Peruvian TV
I’m ok; I’m alright, there’s no school today; they stormed the embassy

Brick and dust surrounded the position I gained
⸺ intermediary of grief

I translated a friend’s poetry collection into English
it was violent intimacy

butterflies ripped through sewn mouths
songs from hell echoed against salt walls
bodies stacked into flesh ladders
Have you ever disrobed in another’s syntax?

While in the city, I did not return for fifteen years
my friend and I stared at each other over coffee
In that city, I fight to make mine

we discussed the body
how the war crystallized us
⸺ all bodies have expiration dates
grief sinks in
A dagger halfway through a meal

we discussed truth,
its most savage dimension
⸺we share the violence of disappearing

I wrote a poem after a friend’s painting
it was chromatic intimacy

Beings of light fused through a brush
bird and insect flutter toward the sun
syncretic mastery as shavings of tradition and blood
Have you ever prayed to acrylic gods?
A question birthed a poem

While in the city above the clouds, the painter & I
discussed convergence
how to write on canvas, and how to paint on a page
We feasted on potatoes and prayed to the sun

I rode a friend’s sculpture,
It was collective intimacy.

To celebrate Peru’s bicentennial
He sculpted a monument without its rider
to answer a question, to grant us access, and to render us liberators.
Can the viewer complete the exhibit?

On a cliff facing the pacific, the artist and I
discussed divisions
colonial, systematic, past and present
public space is a battle
⸺we share the duty of inclusion

Until now, I have avoided writing
of my brown desires
⸺witness

To write anything, you must know
how to write about love, Hilton Als said
Without that, how could you even carry on?

And what I love are ravages
Ravages of what my old country became
The ravages I hold of the career
I left behind in order to write
presence due to absence

& lo que amo son las ruinas
los trozos y los rastros
todo lo que delata una pérdida
la presencia por ausencia
⸺fracture

My lover whispered into my ear:
Why did you quit teaching, you loved it so much?
I close my eyes and
the countenances of every student I fought for
become itemized
⸺nostalgia

Intimacy cannot be skipped
Love is not consolation; it is light. Simone Weil said.
compassion hides in the heart
just as the sun sinks into a fog bank
& downfog the teacher I was and the writer I am
embrace in tempered light

My life is ample losses and vast generosities
jammed together
unswallowed by old shadows
I now worship in a temple of light
always in the interstices of life
where all my praying is done with a pen in hand