All rights reserved © Leonardo Ruiz Díaz


Xochimilco

When I mean to write     sometimes,
It happens that the moon is low
    ajolotes stick their heads out faraway
    on a chinampa of dreams
      large & quiet
      hopeless asphodels of a cosmic night

how hidden this light forever
it comes to frighten my mind
When I mean to write     sometimes,
To live is just a clotted rhyme

Childhood memories

Time’s a jelly a medio cuajar:
hours turn back with lumpy smiles,
those days when air used to weigh pain
and our bodies used to sink into weakened maps
      as if flesh was foaming behind the mirror:
      arms & legs beaten up by the sticky element,
      tiding around the purple mop of a lion
This simple image of the childhood we had not
Because there was way too much blood in our side of sky
That we can hardly see the lone trail of an old-time papalote


Selección de poemas publicados en el número inaugural de la Latino Book Review (2019), Lubbock, Texas.