Verdad Magazine Volume 13
Fall 2012, Volume 13
Poetry by Juan Carlos Reyes
fire escapes
watching us in ways never
ours, in papier-mâché echoes
sewn on ledges & rails feigning
escape our histories a picture
perfect past fictions always
a mystery even to me even from
above tricks chiming over
grocer church doorways &
gross plain versions of ourselves,
because from above, heaven’s shaky rickets
ladder fire stairs try in refuge pressed
cheek noses chins tight bars socks
pocket butt green stained green from
chipped bits & rust dangled ankles
sandals pots lining sills summer gales
tossed petals eyes locked morning shade
no one bade welcome cities a-rev
mattress gravel lots red lights & honks,
& in sights from above soft parting part-
smiles swallow rubber stick handfuls
airy sidewalk balls sign- -less front
stoops & passing banister ahead some months
laughing alley discard knobs turn alarming
paved gazes in whirring rumble
trucks cracking concrete knees & gutter
shelved cans wrapping wet leaves
dime & park stocked Lincoln skylark con-
-sumption riveting tongues a cholera
criminology we never fled reducing
childhoods we forget to places abutting frozen
bed sheets buried Styrofoam boxes attic
suitcases nine years running unzipped,
& in traces from above hanging shoes perched
notebooks borrowed binding open panes
mis- -placed re- -signing us assigned space
third story crevice fresh & baked homes mom
says twice says again This This is yours now
son, this place is yours, but what do we tell
boys whose sold homes bedroom corners
& ‘noleum never shine his name never call
his name can’t recall his name that inter-
-changeable name no one shouts right twice
even a second time coupling apologies slipped
unwound misnomers in pants in drawers abetting
his laundered pants even the wall’s spackle
leaves deep colored prints recollected re-
-frained whispered exhale renege
with unspoken untitled portraits trust-
-ing that from above, holes no one sees spray
painted walls in bulky thighs shoulders
knuckles God lording landlord thin- -boned
nails sharpened teeth & feet his dreamt
image sketched poster & unplugged guitar
better this anything at all but this this
imbibing place nature & home that never
feels like he can rightfully own & so walking
upstreets & down bricks outnumbering fenced
gate public schools sixth graders find torture
in untreasured names like rattled trains when
bus tickets claim seats ghosts prey war-
-ming offered tired transparent thank-yous,
Hello Transit Authority, you have always
been kind, unselfish quarter bowlfuls on
ribbed floors inhaling the unshowered
lonely greys & castaways, thank you for
stopping, even when you didn’t have to,
& it’s from above we’ll see ourselves
passing in flickered strands no one
brushes away on temples indented
bushy spectacled skins on buttons
right flapping & hands stowed away
on paled fists crating milk & orange
yogurt & beans home on aging hurried
belts unthreaded worn & too poor
to replace watches a-scratched face
proper times mistaken come upon raise’n
desert wrists elbows squints high on
high to suns glimmering broken
windshield praying nightly just cave
in tomorrow don’t cave in tomorrow but stay
until moons tuck everything saved to bed.
BIO: Juan Carlos Reyes is originally from Guayaquil, Ecuador. In 2007, he received a PEN USA Emerging Voices Rosenthal Fellowship, and his stories, poems and essays have appeared in Arcadia, Black Warrior Review, Blue Stem and The Busy Signal. He holds a Mathematics degree from New York University, and he currently teaches creative writing, literature, and composition at The University of Alabama. He has recently finished work on his first novel, A Summer's Lynching.