After Rubén
Poems + Prose
Francisco Aragón
- 160 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
After Rubén
Poems + Prose
Francisco Aragón
About This Book
This collection of poetry, prose, and translations explores Latinx and queer identity through homage to the great Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío. After Rubén unfolds a decades-long journey braiding together the personal, the political and the historical. Throughout the text, acclaimed poet Francisco Aragon intersperses English-language translations and riffs of the Spanish-language master Rubén Darío. Whether it's biting portraits of public figures, or nuanced sketches of his father, Francisco Aragón has assembled his most expansive collection to date, evoking his native San Francisco, but also imagining ancestral spaces in Nicaragua. Readers will encounter pieces that splice lines from literary forebearers, a moving elegy to a sibling, a surprising epistle from the grave. In short, After Rubén presents a complex and fascinating conversation surrounding poetry in the Americas—above all as it relates to Latinx and queer poetics.
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II
KEOUGH HALL
University of Notre Dame
knocking
at your door”
the day
after—“build
we’re
building
around
your room!”
felt
like hours
you managed,
catching
by cracking
your door:
of them
scurrying
their faces
obscured . . .
against
the wall, you slid
“Hail Mary . . .”
you began
to yourself
and back
laughter
louder
felt
like hours
in your chest—
his fist
THE INEVITABLE
It barely feels.
Envy even more
this stone
that hasn’t felt
for ages. Tell me
of an affliction
more acute
than breathing,
of something worse
than knowing
that we are, yet
knowing nothing,
unsure of which
path to take.
And what to make
of this sense
we’re on a wheel,
uncanny hunch
of bleaker things
to come, the only truth
one day we die?
We endure this life,
shadows, what we
ignore and hardly
suspect, skin that glows
like a shimmering piece
of fruit, visions
of a wreath
beside a tomb, all
the while without
a clue
of where we began,
where we go.
TO GEORGE W. BUSH
book you claim to know;
bard—might these be ways
modern, simple complex—
animal, three parts owner
is what you are, poised
Lean, strong specimen
hardly read when not
You see a building in flames
volcano. And where you point
you stake the future—yours
not so fast. O there’s
of this nation: it moves it
down to the tip
your voice and it’s
is mine), stars in the east
are clothes, their cars,
a harbor lady lighting
But America, sir,
and South—delicate
thundering sheet
are crossing
O man of bluest eye
it is not—you are not
TENOCHTITLAN, 1523
WIND & RAIN
umbrella, the stroll
lasting four hours, your socks
you thought: crossing, re-crossing
the Thames on foot sheer
Leicester Square, that throng . . .
—What happened?
before she could speak
a slick wall of coats
he was: plum-colored,
rolling past on a stretcher . . .
The rest of your walk
a blur . . . —I think his heart
a tie, but those weren’t the ones
that spoke to you, still do:
hair in your eyes . . . and his wife.
I saw the ring. expecting him home
1985
of gray, aflutter in the light
wind as she prepares to tell
reaching into a tattered sack
she pulls out a doll
singed face smudged with soot
from the smoke her home took in
Next she retrieves what’s left
of a book—a few pages
apart in her hands: hesitant,
she raises one, starts to read aloud:
la tierra nos da dónde vivir y qué comer
la vaca nos da leche para beber y hacer mantequilla
the poem she read to her
the day they struck—
the earth provides a place to live and what to eat
the cow gives us milk to drink and churn butter with . . . )
to shake—her words
like refugees exposed to the night shiver,
swallows us all . . .
. . . her words, drifting
gather and huddle
in my throat.
POEM WITH A PHRASE OF ISHERWOOD
Governor, your name echoing the sludge
beneath your cities’ streets. It spurs
whenever your mouth nears
a mic, defending your law . . . your wall.
Governor, we’ve noticed your face
its contortions and delicate sneer
certain ribbons—visit a dusty place
you’d rather avoid, out of the heat.
Governor, the vision of your state
something you treasure in secret