Francisco Aragón

Three poems

Love Poem

Just let the San Andreas
stay put, keeping this tunnel
intact, enough to amble

out of it, past Louie’s Dim
Sum a Saturday afternoon,
a breeze detectable off

the bay — visible in the distance,
carrying with it the smells
of open air markets:

crab freshly caught
and seahorses piled
in bins along Stockton...

or Jack, strolling out of the tube
connecting Polk Gulch
and North Beach, on his way

to Aquatic Park to spread
the Sporting Green
on his favorite patch of grass...

He is ferrying the portable
radio to his ear,
listening for the count

in the bottom of the ninth
at Candlestick and then
begins to smooth

the pages with his palms
before he sits
to keep it dry: the split

seat of his pants

— for Jack Spicer (1925–1965)

Nicaragua in a Voice

More than the poems
(the fruits that sang
their juices; dolls, feverish,
dreaming of nights,

city streets) for me it was
the idle chat between the poems:
cordial, intimate almost...
like a river’s murmur

as if a village — Chontales,
Granada — could speak,
whistle, inhabit
a timbre...as if, closing

my eyes, I had it again,
once more within reach
his voice — my father
ill, won’t speak.



Of Wind and Rain

Davis, CA

This valley rain, swayed by wind — gray

as that distant afternoon
but for the stroll that lasted hours
and hours, soaking

his socks — it doesn’t matter
he thought, exploring city streets
for the first time

pleasure, until he came upon
a crowd bordering Leicester Square
What happened?, he asked

a petit lady wearing glasses, but
before she could speak a wall
of umbrellas and coats

parted down the middle where
he was: plum-faced,
rolling through on a stretcher...

Moments later they covered him up.
The rest of his walk
he doesn’t recall — I think his heart

stopped, a suited man offered
but those weren’t the ones
that spoke to him, still do:

poor man, softly, her light-blue
hair in his eyes...and his wife —
I saw the ring — expecting him home

for supper, like every night

Francisco Aragón is the author of Puerta del Sol (Bilingual Press, 2005). His poems and translations have appeared in various print and web publications, including Chain, Crab Orchard Review, Electronic Poetry Review, and Terra Incognita. He is the founding editor of Momotombo Press (http://www.momotombopress.com/ ), which supports emerging Latino writers and is housed at the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame, where he is a Fellow. He is currently editing an anthology of Latino poets, slated for publication in 2006 by University of Arizona Press.