Fourth Tenochitlan
David Shook
after Eduardo Lizalde
Over the howling valley of
some God’s throat: breath
warm & rank high-hopped
beer & grain alcohol in plastic
bottles by night burnt coffee
& diesel by morning & nothing
but the dry mouth of hunger
during the day
*
Its nebulas of insects
DEET-proof beasts with
beaks & wings thicker
than glass no eyelash
hairs for legs no pinpoint
eyes nebulas, galaxies of
beetles a colony of roaches
in the cast-iron stove
*
A continent of downy aeronauts
floats over the city the tectonic
city shifts like an uneasy plate
jostling its neighbors for space
but the down for all its fluff
weighs more than lead but the
down sticks to the city like cement
*
The green eyes of a monstrous
butcher guard the edges of the
sinkhole his cleaver is dull but
still he uses it with vigor he chops
with squawk & flame like a gunshot
like he’s stalking the bovine corpses
from a deer-stand & he is silent with
his mouth
*
A plane passes by at night they’re
like jewels on an invisible string
descending into protracted
numbness the hollow laughter
of old friends the boys that
gargle gasoline on corners
to make a meal’s worth of change
*
The condors have their cage
barred with volcanic peaks
they feed themselves the carrion
that litters the streets: dog meat,
goat meat, chickens & hares
sacrificed to the rich to the
tires of cars discarded
David Shook is a poet, translator, and essayist whose work appears in magazines like Ambit, PN Review, Poetry, and World Literature Today. Kilometer Zero, a poetry documentary he covertly filmed in Equatorial Guinea, is forthcoming in 2012, along with his translation of Mario Bellatin’s Shiki Nagaoka: A Nose for Fiction. He lives in Los Angeles, where he edits Molossus. http://davidshook.net
