Underwater Poet - Andrés Alfaro
The dictionary brain
once containing the
darkest secrets of humanity
suddenly bursts like a bubble
--------------------------
Underwater Poet
The poet under water
is pressured all the same
while the ocean’s algae and fungi
attack her soul
and bulging balloons
become her eyes.
The dictionary brain
once containing the
darkest secrets of humanity
suddenly bursts like a bubble
and sends a million fragile bubbles
out to join the darkest treasures
of the deep blue sea
of which she once wrote,
“I am not but a creature of this blue planet
on which I have learned to love
without being loved,
to care for
without being cared for,
on which the infinite bad
is outweighed by the miniscule good
and hence will certainly cause
my euphoric demise.”
--------------------------
An Artful Transformation
Art snobs singing a gleeful tune
in clandestine underground breweries
abounding with scandalous sculptures.
I hear their jubilant racket from outside the gates.
Curious, I enter
but I’m met with
the transformation of their chorus into silence
their clothing into transparency
and their once mirthful eyes
into horrid, hollow sockets of pretension.
Their sudden insecurity
secures my fate
as my stomach and brain
begin to fail me
and my skin bubbles and boils,
plaguing me with
the torment of humanity’s
wintry exclusions.
-San Jose, Costa Rica, April 2010
Andrés Alfaro is a poet, musician, translator and teacher who is currently the editor of the Mahmag Spanish section. He is set to start his MFA candidacy in Literary Translation at the University of Iowa in August, 2010.