Many thanks to those who read my poems.
Originally published in Stonecoast Review, Issue #18, January 2023
El Paso Dream
Juarez tethers me like a balero
with a bridge instead of string. I tread
Stanton’s crammed path
over the near-waterless Rio Grande.
I could have walked its dehydrated bed.
Tanned leather’s weathered smell
infuses the mercado’s air. Piñatas,
penuche. Day of the Dead disguises,
candles, coupled like an afterlife
marriage, entice tourists to a tienda.
Street vendors
make mariachi marionetas
dance — ¡baila, baila! —
like I’ll never be able. Still
I hand over my pesos. I possess
a tangle of string, wooden legs, tiny
guitar. I’ll figure it out when I get home
… quizás.
I stop at a corner for Negra Modelo, risky
time for beer: La Linea y Los Aztecas,
Los Mexicles y Artistas Asesinos —
and a hundred more gangs whose names
I can’t remember — own the Juarez nights.
I am gabacho; I must leave. Windless
and weak, I pant on my bicycle up Scenic
past the painted white “A” on the Franklin
Mountains. Gabriel is with me, Sylvia and Arturo,
Melchor y Timo — but we never come here
together.
Images, rapid as a cartel’s AR-15s:
Sun Bowl, Sunland Park, Fort
Bliss, Chamizal, Texas Western wins it all
in ’66. Nunchucks and knives
in the halls of Austin High. San Jacinto Plaza,
alligators in central pond.
(No one knows why gators in a desert town.)
Menudo written on a wall in letters four feet tall.
No need. I can smell it four blocks back.
My garden of prickly pears, yuccas, barrel
cactus and pampa grass.
I know it’s a dream
like I know the El Paso
I knew is lost
in desert dust:
A winding tumbleweed thrown
by West Texas wind. Still
jumbled. Still
gone.
© Gary P English 2022
Originally published in Home Planet Newsm Issue #10, November 2022
Heart of Stars
astronomers discover radio signal “heartbeat”
from across universe — mit, 13 july 22
a single heartbeat
revealing
repeating
billions of light years away
passionate pulsing
the heart’s pounding
is a song carried this far this long
to my eavesdropping
astronomers heard it first
they assert
it’s radio waves
from neutron stars impossibly far
now they’ll grasp how fast
we’re expanding exploding dispersing
disappearing
in a stellar wind
seekers proclaim order
in frequencies sorted
high low above below
they know
what it should mean to me
hearing seeing
cancer radiation being
numbers along waves spectrum
science-deafened heartbeat-lessened
i hear a provocative
rhythm driven
across the universe
echoing seduction
we meld
in neutron eruption
radiating our own
magnetic waves
another billion years
they will listen with intuition
imagine our passion unfastened
reaching the future
in a resonant
imploding
heartbeat …
it must have stopped by now
it must have stopped
© Gary P English 2022
Originally published in Home Planet News, Issue #10, November 2022
How to Invent a Life
First, prep your canvas
for the illusion you’re bringing.
Lots of gesso. Yes. No. Don’t stop.
Cover the old crude sketch
You can’t erase.
More gesso, more. White it out.
You’ve got it! You’re a natural.
This should be simple.
Grab a tube of cerulean, or Prussian blue,
whichever you prefer.
Blend them together if you want, but not too much.
You want to leave patches detectable.
Now slather them all over your canvas.
Build a new background for your revision.
Don’t be careful, don’t be shy … good, good.
I told you it was simple.
Didn’t say it would be easy, though.
Now mix pinks, blues, ochres for her face.
Mauves and purples too if you wish.
A touch of plum for shadows. Take the risk.
Don’t fret, it will be fine. You’ll see.
You want to make her shudder like a ghost,
like a woman delivered from the North Atlantic,
like Mary when she watched Jesus die.
Great! That’s the way.
Don’t replicate what you see;
Reveal how you feel.
Her hair must be young and soft, but not new.
From the past, sometime.
Say, the 1990s.
Her eyes must be strong like the ’40s,
Wild like the ’60s.
Exploring eyes.
Her nose, let’s see …
Not large, not delicate.
Just enough to pull her face together.
Be sure to paint an easy smile. Your audience will like that.
Happy faces make them happy.
But don’t overdo it:
Leave a smidge of desperation around her mouth.
Full lips. Everyone likes full lips. Her mouth can taste what’s new.
Yes, that’s it!
A simple chain around her neck,
A stone the same color as her eyes. Green, I think.
Maybe a small relic from the past
she can’t fully forget.
Her open blouse teasing … not slutty, not prude.
There!
Something for everyone. Everything for someone.
Leave nothing for no one.
Are you finished yet?
© Gary P English 2022
Originally published in Grey Sparrow Journal , Winter Issue, January 2022
Watching Ida Barnstorm the South
Louisiana spins tales: the Gulf storm grows.
I scan my wooden shack,
where light blinks between slats that wobble in wind volleys.
My sons exploring their passions, my wife embedded in earth
pervade the home they once possessed —
Spanish moss memories
hanging from live oaks outside my cabin.
Satellite scenes on my TV depict
Fibonacci spirals
expanding over the sea like a moonflower, unfolding
in a slow spin north toward alligator-green bayous.
Its whale-like blow spews
a cataract of seawater over the Delta.
Signpost, house frame surrender their grips.
Rocks and rebar, studs and shingles
barricade the roads.
Incessant tides transform streets into canals,
houses into islands in my river city.
The onslaught persists until light.
Pirogues emerge to navigate through the litter
as dawn surveys the new topography.
Morning lauds are muted.
Inside, my shelter offers no shelter.
I crouch under uncovered rafters,
amid fractured wallboards, splintered glass;
My waterlogged mattress askew
over a cistern gouged from the floor in the night.
Sons can’t return to the cabin they called home.
The sweat-stenched A-shirt clings heavy.
My coarse-haired, muddy head falls
in surrender.
© Gary P English 2021
Originally published in a slightly different form in Home Planet News, Issue #10, November 2022
Adobe Oven
I twist my body to squeeze my belly
between the greasy gas range
and yellow-tiled sink counter.
Curse the pendejo who
crammed the kitchen
into an 8x8 box.
Wedge my torso into the cranny by the front door
to escape my sweaty, cramped apartment.
Outside my adobe cave, the West Texas summer
sends a dust devil down my street, tumbleweed in tow.
“¡Ay, que calor!” a woman tells me
as she wobbles past.
“Tórrido,” I agree
watching ripples rise from burnt asphalt
where an ancient arroyo once spread.
Weary from 10 hours scouring hotel-suite baños,
her short, heavy legs force her body
further uphill.
Beyond her, the raw sienna rocks
of the Franklin Mountains
open the pass that names the dilating city
stolen from the desert.
Like angry javelinas,
new malls and nightclubs,
casas y calles
dart into the dusty kiln
of prickly pear and mesquite,
breach the Chihuahuan Desert.
Once a yucca or saguaro thrived
where the concrete front stoop
burns my thighs.
I survey the barrio corner where I live,
inhale menudo from down the street.
Taste sweat that trickles down my face
and wonder if cacti and rattlers
will ever
reclaim their land.
— Gary P English 2022
Originally published in a slightly different form in Home Planet News, Issue #10, November 2022
After the Breakup
My
angel — maybe
she’s my demon —
slipped me a roofie,
hoping I would grow groggy
and leave blistering visions of you
out on the dance floor. Vomit whisky
until my throat glows blue as firewalker coals.
Smoke blind, tell every woman I fancy her naked.
My angel demon slurs like a barstool drunk. Orders me
a round. Blurred images in neon light stagger by.
Now she’s as beguiling as a pole dancer.
I watch my angel strip away G-strings
of your memory, thread by thread.
The next morning, I wake
in young angel’s bed.
My mouth rejects
demon’s bitter
tongue.
© Gary P English 2022
Originally published in Home Planet News, Issue #10, November 2022
Good-bye
Her Viking ship cradles her, anticipates flaming arrows. I linger
beside her: Her quest to become an angel haunting
like demons. An organ’s tinny notes summon me;
I leave the longship blaze. Friends allege:
She’ll be an angel now. Empty
words I know aren’t true.
Angels can’t fly from
wildfire so eternal:
ashes imprison
ashes.
© Gary English 2022
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