My visits to the Zoo always lead me to the Monkey Temple. It is an old, ruined, Indian Temple, half-hidden in the trees and populated by a colony of monkeys. Sometimes, the monkeys are playing in the open, sometimes they aren't. Patience is everything: sooner or later, the monkeys will appear, revealing themselves in all their splendor. I do not like to call these refuges from modern city life zoos; rather, I think of them in terms of nature reserves, preservation centers, museums, art galleries with living portraits, areas where human beings can break from the city's restlessness and come...
My visits to the Zoo always lead me to the Monkey Temple. It is an old, ruined, Indian Temple, half-hidden in the trees and populated by a colony of m...
"I have folded Dali's clock, draping time's dressing gown over the foot of her bed," writes the poet as he sits beside his mother's bed on his last visit to her in hospital. She lies there, unconscious, and the poet, looking at her fragile frame, wonders "Is the human body a chest of drawers to be opened and closed at will and things removed?" Though Lovers Be Lost begins with these direct links to Salvador Dali's brand of surrealism and continues in this same poem with a leading statement from the surrealist manifesto: "On the operating table, a sewing machine and a bread knife wait inside a...
"I have folded Dali's clock, draping time's dressing gown over the foot of her bed," writes the poet as he sits beside his mother's bed on his last vi...
"They tore down our walls," Mono whispered, "stone by stone. A new church they built on the land they stole from us." These opening lines begin the verbal adventure of Sun and Moon. Written in Oaxaca, Mexico, between 1995 and 1999, the poems tell some of the tales of the voiceless, of the conquered, of the displaced, of the survivors, of the people who eat and sleep in the streets of Oaxaca, spinning their myths and legends and recalling their oral histories and memories. Sun and Moon traces the relationships between two civilizations, the indigenous and the conquerors, from the first...
"They tore down our walls," Mono whispered, "stone by stone. A new church they built on the land they stole from us." These opening lines begin the ve...
The Empress of Ireland collided with a Norwegian collier whose bows had been strengthened for ice-breaking abut six miles off shore from Ste. Luce in the early hours of the morning of the 29th of May, 1914. Approximately 15 minutes lapsed between the moment of impact (1:55 am) and the moment the ship caught fire and sank (2:10 am). Although the disaster has received little international attention, more passengers were lost in this incident (840) then in the sinking of the Titanic (832) or the Lusitania (791). The words of the Empress of Ireland are not my words. They could never be my words....
The Empress of Ireland collided with a Norwegian collier whose bows had been strengthened for ice-breaking abut six miles off shore from Ste. Luce in ...
"Beneath my balcony, the handy man tumble-dries a tv advertisement in the washing machine of his song sparrow throat. An old man now, I dream of white rabbits, running down tunnels, far from the hunter's hands. The alarm clock shuffles its pack of sleeping hours: a clicking of claws, needles knitting outwards towards death's guillotine while the sharp beaks of roosters dig for the dawn." At the Edge of Obsidian is the second book in The Oaxacan Trilogy. It was first published in 2005 and outlines the events of a single day in the City of Oaxaca (Mexico). I have always loved the Liturgical...
"Beneath my balcony, the handy man tumble-dries a tv advertisement in the washing machine of his song sparrow throat. An old man now, I dream of white...
Nashwaak Editions publico Land of Rocks and Saints / Tierra de cantos y santos en 2008 en Fredericton, Nuevo Brunswick, Canada. En esta edicion nueva, Avila: cantos y santos y ciudad de la Santa, el poeta traduce sus poemas originales al espanol. Pero, mas que una traduccion, ese libro es una elaboracion sobre los poemas primitivos de la primera edicion. No todos han cambiado, pero su conversion -- mejor palabra quizas que traduccion, -- de la primera lengua a la segunda, ha abierto diferentes caminos que dan una nueva vida y un espiritu fresco a estos versos que ilustran la tierra antigua y...
Nashwaak Editions publico Land of Rocks and Saints / Tierra de cantos y santos en 2008 en Fredericton, Nuevo Brunswick, Canada. En esta edicion nueva,...
... at five thirty, the bullfight will begin, and at 3 o'clock we gather in the city center and slowly wend our way from bar to bar, up the Calle de Burgos, past the street where you live and upwards, ever upwards, towards the bull ring at the top of the hill, from bar to bar, I say, and the bota, the wine-skin fills and re-fills with that dark red fluid that will set us all baying for the bull's blood, or the matador's blood, it doesn't matter whose blood, as long as someone bleeds and the bull is butchered, torn from this life by men afoot or on horseback, armed with lances and swords ...
... at five thirty, the bullfight will begin, and at 3 o'clock we gather in the city center and slowly wend our way from bar to bar, up the Calle de B...
