Poem: Translations Of An Unknown Mexican Poet (5)

Translations Of An Unknown Mexican Poet

5.

This house has not grown too tight for Juan yet,
or too last season for a new sense of the world,
but the discontented walls provide no pockets
for half-chewed gum, a shiny quarter, hands.

And the boy is searching for pockets everywhere.
Not the room shared with his sister, not the bed
which sheds its blue cotton skin without warning,
Not even the body turning out its pockets quietly.

My son, there is a silver lining in the mind,
a seam we follow like a suture, then a scar,
and then an igneous ridge on which genius runs,
scrambling and scraping some, to the very head

and see the chewed-up jungle and the shiny cities
kept safe and secret in the pocket of the palm.


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