Verdad Magazine Volume 5
Fall 2008, Volume 5
Poetry by Raul Ruiz
Untitled (A poem with the stomach flu)
I think, wanting to be anywhere else than here
sick under a summer sun and too homesick for words,
of the rain coming down
the glowing Marcy's
the glowing headlights of cars
the lavender plants feeding off the drops drinking the
air believing in truths built on dirt
on the hurting hands of our fathers the
fingernails always caked with dirt
the open bookstores wild notes on O'Hara Cisneros Twain
a pair of thin ankles rising to feel
old Whitman on a high shelf breathing its
own ink tasting its own pages
a loud Fingerprints only record store to know what I was
talking about, Sun Ra flying through black
speakers I ask someone is that really an organ
sounds more like earth splitting, what the fuck
the many windshields showing the outside no-sun colors
colors belonging to my old grandmothers who
loved and cried when their husbands died and know
the dirt of Chihuahua to be a quiet skin that
heals with the touch of a little girl sleepy at two
I think of the rain and I think of the umbrellas making
all the girls look like models for salt even the
ones with the mean look and tight pants
with thick wrists and violets for tongues
BIO: Raul Ruiz has an Associate degree from Long Beach City College and will graduate from California State University, Long Beach, in May, 2008, with a BA in English. He plans to pursue graduate school.