Poems for Driving Away Satan

by Jesús Carmona-Robles

Translated by Tive Martínez

SYMPOSIUM

he said there's something wrong with me

she said today is so cold

he said we'd better not travel together

she said nobody ever gonna have your eyes

he said my father's dying tomorrow

she said we were rough fuckers

he said i have some money at home

she said let's meet at the graveyard if it snows tomorrow

he said i know i look so scared and it's true

she said Mexico is a funny place

he said take my hand cause the ground's gonna sink

she said i wore this dress for you

he said my friends read your poems

and took two more steps backwards

she said punch my face

whenever i say ME

he said the airplane was covered of blood in my dream and i couldn't find you

she said he nailed me so hard

i felt like dying

he said i don't like the way you cry

she said moi je t'offrirai des perles de pluie

he said let's go dancing

she said my parents don't wanna see you

he said it's been nine days without sunlight

she said let's marry

he said we need to get drunk soon to make love

she said then i received your text message

and he became so aggressive

he said Satan is the man with a burned face

and he wears a blue suit

she said i love you because you understand the blood

he said i am a virgin and that's why i cum so quickly

she said sorry for telling you all this

he said i love you i love you i love you i love you i love you

she said i don't eat meat

he said my niece wants to know you

she said your penis is huge

he said the night stopped being purple and became black

she said i'm gonna give you my dearest thing

he said nire iraganeko bizitzan

euskaren madarikatu bat izan dut

she said smoke as much as you want

he said i'm gonna miss the flavor of your nipples

she said i wanna have a child

he said the poem is the poem is the poem

she said the virus base is up-to-date

he said you must go to the gynecologist

she said please don't hurt me

he said my friends will never forgive you

she said i love you i love you i love you i love you i love you

he said i've never touched such a soft and sacred hand

she said i'm sleepy

he said i'll be the sun

and i'll be the rain if the sun doesn't light your path

she said just shut up i love you shut up

he said and i'll find another way for you to understand

you are okay

even if the rain doesn't wash away your sorrows

she said i'm not gonna fade

he said this is too much

she said hope you'll never feel the need to kill yourself again

he said i'm gonna break your heart

she said i didn't love him anymore

he said please don't you marry

she said call me when you arrive to your hometown

he said i've never ever felt such a rage

she said so this is what i'm supposed to tell

when people ask me why

he said i'm gonna fall in love with you

she said i don't believe i'm in Mexico

and have only taken six bottles of beer

he said if it goes all wrong i'll cut out to Alaska

to die among the polar bears

she said it's not that bad actually

he said ok

she said it's time to die

he said fuckin' ayahuasca is to be blamed

she said i read all these poems that you write

he said thanks for dancing with me

she said i am rotten

he said our blue mansion

she said marry me

and then get divorced

and then we'll marry again

he said Mexico sucks

she said whatabitch

he said all

            all is said

BIG  STUPID WONDERFUL THINGS

I talk to the women I believed to be in love with

in a moment of vagueness

with one other longing I tell them

lies were white loving elusive

as the night's first smile

which is warm and purple only for a moment

look at her she's the woman I love the extended time

the eternal and invisible watch hand

I want to tell them how I learnt

the appetite for killing from your love

those who acted as an artifice

in the steamy days of your childhood

There's a knife I handle

all of them must know there's a knife

I receive it in my chest thinking my body

as a lie now and forever

my father saw me crying

and he wrapped my heart in his hands

he is my father behold the way he cries

the way he loses his breath

consider him while I locate in my memory

the laughter of this woman I'm loving

her neck hidden in my father's neck

how I smile I hold the knife and he runs

he runs as I run to love an island surrounded by voices

and clockworks a defeated and conquered island

locate my father see my fear in his fear

the fear I turn into a beast

Know in addition that the waiting room is full

nobody can enter please wait outside

I know it's cold outside but there's too many people

not a soul would fit please leave out

I'm taking up five seats

I'm lying all my body down

I am the waiting room I smell like medicine

and my coffee tastes so bad wait in me

inhabit me as the cancer arrives

play in my floor tiles full of footsteps and chlorine

for years now the woman I love is kissing

the disease I invented myself

when I was spore and fungus before being me now

when I could barely move

I know the disease she kisses

but I can't talk

please raise your voice tell her about the night

I almost died I almost disappeared

I mean right now you that inhabit me

as God inhabits dead bodies right now

grab her from her short hair

grab her from her white wrists bite her lips

explain to her how love and hate are braided

in the sharpest end of my soul

and they force me to do big stupid wonderful things.

7754

namaste may your light be unrotten

plenty of food in your pantry namaste

nothing to bring you sorrow

you're also the smell of mouths you didn't kiss namaste

the cricket that keeps the beat namaste

of your sobbing at night

you're the lie in the namaste of your friend

who swears not to dope again

but you're at his side searching for the thickest vein

masturbating statues

you're also the smell of orange trees namaste

one woman steps on your face

she spreads oil and honey on her breasts namaste

you like this don't you you do

namaste you're built by your daily writing

in front of your parents

you're an eco-friendly little house

namaste but you're expensive

however there won't be storm tornado conflagration namaste

to reduce you to what you are

rubble uneven ground step-on land

by those who cannot lie

by those who cannot say namaste

i took out my clothes namaste this is my silver light

this is my scream and my riches namaste

this body belongs to my hands only

when i'm alone

feed yourself from my soft flesh namaste lick this honey

which ignites me

it tastes like vanilla and thunder namaste open your mouth

it tastes like this lightnigh bolt which is my solitude

namaste don't you see there are no questions worth asking

who cares

how was my first namaste my father's job

how was my first failed meeting

with drugs don't you see that questions are like kites

in an electrical storm

namaste just dry my body switch on the tv

play some music call for a taxi

don't you see the sunrise

and the world that gives us another chance

7754 chances already given by grandfather sun

namaste grandpa sun thanks for having faith in me

don't touch it i'm gonna sleep you can leave if you want to

Jesús Carmona-Robles was born in Chihuahua, México in 1992. He is the author of two poetry books: TOS (CONACULTA 2013) and Poemas para ahuyentar a Satán (El Gaviero Editores 2015). Along with Luna Miguel and Adrian Martínez, he edited the anthology "Pasarás de moda: 35 poetas jóvenes en español" (Montea 2015) which is a selection of the most representative works of Hispanic American young poets. His translations of Tao Lin, Robin Myers, Lyn Coffin, Ahmed Shamlou, and others have been published in several magazines in Mexico and South America.

Tive Martínez was born and currently lives in Spain. Their poems and new poetry translations have been published online in La Tribu de Frida, PlayGround, Electric Cereal, and in fanzines like B/Polar.

4 from Acrostic Aspic by Joe Milazzo

Debralee Scott

At the pinnacle where the ladder springs most narrow or
most yellow, in my lily-bedded attending which
is also my affording, there’s this capital-S
special dumpster. It’s kitted out

with the masonry of mustaches and caged light like malice,
stripes of all those silverskin patches where the pajama
jean’s been treated like a bench ratcheted around kagels. (All personality
is memorized.) “Ovens,” a gentrification of garbage says, and gargles,

and all trending ends up in a pickled vaudeville. What about
degrees of learning? Cataracts? Harumphs? Underneath the pollen and pampered
grass and GMO saguaro this dumpster’s fecal espresso has swallowed, I expect
the fumes of throwaway luxury hide some spire, as peroxide as bare legs

rubbing themselves to a fever underneath the hem
of a premature spring’s cardigan. And at that holy needle’s
tip, a campaign sticker, stuck cattywampus to a backpack
casually deforming its hang before it gets up

the gumption to walk its purse away from the likes of my
membership. (Purging or breaking? More like surfing simulated
with a den’s cushions.) And inside that backpack there’s a bus stop,
crowded with the sun that spots itself on tinted windshields,
the action-deprived film behind which the claw-tooth bucket

of an excavator rides a bicycle frame’s weightlessly inverted
hypotenuses into laneless forests of curbs, aerating shoelaces,
solar granite decomposed in the weak acid of pedal steel and fiddle
solos. Here, in this development, mosquitos are cinderblocks of fire ants, mosquito

hawks in the sowthistle a damp coiffure shaken loose by the passing of an
impatiently executive stranger. In these dim and leafy hallways, reflections
are hazmat-ed in acorns, vested in the burlap that says
“in so many words” in just that exact number of words. Five finger discounts

are out of order inside the crepe myrtle’s drawstring bags. Anthropomorphic plaids
climb the sheathing and slash at the caution tape lensing the dumpster’s
psychosomatic cameras. Every step further into the discarded
depths promises a last step: darting, winking, betwixt.

The columns, each a perfect pull, lie dormant, just like sacredness
chalked within its own loop. Arcing is its own two-way traffic, but
estranged, like an android prodigy, from what aching boundaries it still
bewares. (No simile wants to be inside an ejaculation.) Assuming, that is,

that I begin again as I remember beginning:
outside the dumpster’s big body, high above the conductive and
belly-flopping into permitted phyla, standing (gourmet or
gourmand) at a machine yet to return some article of mine within

the ripped demarcations of a hypothetical kitchen.

Gwen Wells

My mother added a perfectly civil 1:18 pornstache
to the galaxy’s favorite farm-boy’s head.
            Masculinity is an opera anything
but hygienic; in the empyrean, no inappropriate uncles
    dandle backstage wives. However old he is,
    a boy going rebel
    strives to sprout the Chevrons that manly men
come with. No, let’s reserve the beard talk; waggish
swagger is for princesses. The follicular destiny of beards
is scrutiny, not barrettes or cornrows interning
    in tall and bristly abundance. Allow how a beard is hiding
something to hide the fact of its hiding from us.
            Unless, of course, it gets Biblical
            and we see a beard for a beard.

First we tweezed the electric ulna
right out of our milk-rajah's arm. One of five points
of articulation, a shoulder for a soldier harrowing
joysticks. Along that affirmative hail and underneath
    his incipient drone, we uncharneled his man-cave,
the slot where you’d slide salvation’s junk
            into and free from playtime. Just like I remember
it, a wish in reverse, the big
blast of futanari never unsheathes its instant
    forthwith, because length quests after length.
    This was action, a trick of vinyl twisting
    and us neon extras deboned and all spitballing.
As slow as collectormania Christmas, or as dull
            as Kickstarter documentary sunshine, the last
            crank had to make-do
            with a lever and a sequel of tugs.

Every street-sweeper driver
has a potential for melting, and
every crayon, however honor roll or randy,
    is fixed, likewise fixed to a finger’s hold. Unlike
    dolls, which our American sibling everybody
knows you hug. Ew; gross. This one earliest
experience with the unicum doesn’t
apprentice with a synod . Strip a tubular manhood of what it teases
    and all you’re left holding is the gutless cul-de-sac
    of an airdancer’s come-hither career. A domineering
            imagination may have applied the Dirty
            Sanchez but it’s mom who tattooed the deed.

What did we learn
by watching her watch us as we slurped
up engrossment’s puerile and licorice sagas? The relief
    of flocculent gnawing. The pineal eye
is a chainsaw, so long as its force growls downstairs. Now
I remember, and remembering
    settles the rickety Zen of my hired
hands down. I want a plastic nacre; I want
    a merkin to match
    the drapes. And I want, how
            I want,
    for each little flagellation
            of sublimation
to keepsake one more jeweled filament
            in my shag of distraction
    so vast and
as shallow.

Ann Druyan

Emoluments are car batteries and lumberjacks
in time’s pay-per-view event against small towns.
Squatting on wireless, she has to elbow
Google in the throat to tag Yahoo! Answers:

why would anyone care to soap
their windows? Shut-in perfumes sext
her nostalgia with a bouquet of bygone
industries: castile soap and chicory, for instance,
rayon and piccadillies and lamp oil. But
squares queer, brick pavements
stray from the spirit level, birdsong barks
like a Montezuma of dogs.
It’s August.
She can’t remember if she’d left the tape measure
as taut as that, but now the hours chew Beeman's
and maybe it will. Or maybe its graduated
tongue won’t snap back and bridge this money pit.

Dairy Queen breakfast and already the multitools
are in a massive halftime hole. There, —
in the drive-thru under the soft-core stagnation
of catalpa tree beans, three SUVs wait
before she can trade on her novel
nativity for an extra hunk of Texas
toast. One Durango red, one
Escape white, one H2 blue.
Instead of “Have a blessed day,” the busted
Frialator voice on the other end of the box
tells her “We could use your 5s.” Her yuppie
food coupon (yep, while she's at, she’ll be bringing
that back too) is traversed with creases only
an automatic teller wouldn’t
recognize for the crossroads they are.  

In the rumble and across the delinquent
languor that’s running away with her languishing,
she’s knows there’s weight—it’s named
“Here”—that can’t ever be cut. No bloodless
revitalization in coming in through the slide of that ice
cream door.
“Ma’am, here’s your parfait.” Between
track ballast and shiplap, its better to be licked
than lick. Only strangers haggle after
the window weights, and wonder
if sashes are screwed as soon as
you submit to anachronistic handles.

Susan Oliver

I say why not
go down dowsing
for the scent of Mr. Sketch.
Or bars where only
locksmiths can score
VIP access
and the stools run analog,
on square waves.
If punch perms
crowd the negronis
and cut off the floor,
I can always thunder
after shells and coins
long into
the subdivided night.

Because freelancing
at this living is some
tumultuous M.C. Escher
shit. Nineteen-fifty
an hour for light
hexadecimal industry.
Specialization clipped me.
I was once a halftone
butterflied in a newspaper,
sprigs of pigtails sweating
the urge of a reel mower.
My dumb head was some
watermelon of a smile
happy for any rules
in my mom’s one
day at a time game.

I can’t mirror myself
now without waiting,
without buffering, without
A joystick palmful
of athlete’s foot
and the acid that I forget
kills it. The brace
on my wrist is one velcro
ass. Conversion lightning,
since its bottled, shouldn’t
it be recyclable? I even
2-D printed that
blue bin, and it
makes me cry,
like WALL-E.

Subreddit
Boko Haram
or the resurrection
of the streetcar
and earn
the scarlet letter
of my “meh”
hand emoji.
My GIFs loop
for Sour Patch
dweebs, LARPing
pirate hoards and
magnetic lasso tools.
My slimed Ghostbuster
walks right
on peppermint planks
that gush over
licorice traffic.
Is that gratification
an IPA? Thank Friday
its Friday, and I need
my Urkel, but tonight
my tastebuds
are totally burnt.

All week it’s phosphor
blocks and plasma dots:
my kaleidoscope
is the atomic clock
downsizing its gears
in anticipation
of an illicit attention’s
DOA. The requested
file is ready. Used
310 times today, OK;
reposting has no ceiling.
This graphic needs
a video. This Taiwan
needs an error message.
This manga needs
a flipbook and this rollover
needs to work.   

But what say someone
pretends, just for a minute,
that the office everyone
shares isn’t
the everywhere
that’s nowhere
anyone’ll ever be?
I’m going ride pulse
of a different ellipsis and
hit the Staples I hate.
At least they have
end cap displays.

There’s a girl there
deserting her grandmother.
She’s dreaming out loud
in Staples, sing-song
wants and wills
in the dog pound
of Post-It Note selections.
A girl promising herself
her diary and all
the secrets she’ll
keep upside-down
where it locks.

Look at her swish
her cornrows.
around. Look at
the way her tween
belly promotes
her brand
or the hair
budding under
her arm.
Look to be
a sister to her
brash sulk. Look
at her customer
engagement
and look how it’s
so random, a song
so much stronger
for being tuneless
and soft. That girl.
She can’t escape
the Hot 100 air
conditioning, or
the persistent link
between her phone
number and her
Staples coupons,
and she doesn’t know it
and I can barely
compute how
or comprehend
why this wreckage
of easy supplies
wrecks me, but
I’m downwind from
her body butter and
I see that girl
surrounded by the
identical bricks
and default tiles
of her fluorescent spirit
and I see that she’s
a Numanoid, too.

ARTIST'S STATEMENT: My concern in these so-called “name poems” (themselves contributing to a longer and still-evolving sequence, tentatively entitled Acrostic Aspic) is with the conditions of celebrity as they are lived by non-celebrities, i.e., “you” and “me.” Or: I suppose these poems are all about minor celebrity, as these titles borrowed from the outer limits of fame suggest. Our subjectivities so often cohere in the back and forth between narratives intensely our own and those widespread narratives with which we cannot help but make contact, or which are in constant contact with us. But the latter narratives are so much more easily represented, not to mention “relatable,” while the former remain largely untranslatable. So this self-exchange can never be equal. Still, people live as they live, and their names mean something to them.

Joe Milazzo is a writer, editor, educator, and designer. He is the author of the novel Crepuscule W/ Nellie and two collections of poetry: The Habiliments and the forthcoming Of All Places In This Place Of All Places. His writings have appeared in Black Clock, Black Warrior Review, BOMB, Prelude, and elsewhere. Joe lives and works in Dallas, TX, but his virtual location is www.joe-milazzo.com.