Dead Latinoax Poets Society (A POEM)

May 15, 2020
3:39 PM

parte 1, Uno. 

A reunión of lemurs,
Youngish, beautiful, oppressed
poised marsupials,
How to curate us? How to cure ourselves?
Make sure not one poem recited
shall express Deseo, Dese-o  =Desire,
winged, either in the Blakean sense,
or in the shake your cha-cha,
for desire, that sorcerer,
though poorer than the giant grant-giver Prospero,
might still conjure forth earnest clichés, so offensive.
The witch-hunters—to be more accurate, in the archaic forbidden
cauldron of “pre genderneutrid” langwidge:
witch huntresses—all prize themselves witches.
Professor Prospero renames himself Calíban
misunderstood,  of the Latin Caribbean (Studies.).
Self-denominations remunerate false humildad,
before smooth billiard-browed locust-eyed curator,
dread, picky warlock.
Modest National Endowment for the Arts, still does
not make a plane-ticket to visit El Salvador
or Punto Fijo, under blood moon,
or under any other moon, affordable, apparently.
Return voyages to native realms may not coincide
with the AWP conference (next year it’s Kansas, Missouri)
Maybe you can get in the picture with a Senator,
all you can b, at the altar of Anglo-American Dream

I alter a consonant sooner than a vowel,
They are offended by the ruffian vowels
in their grand parents’ language, rampant
“ah” at the end signifies a woman talking,
“oh” at the end identifies a male speaking,
AAH OooH AAoah OooohH! gives the haunting suspicion
of procreation—the World Health Organization must
intervene with contraceptive consonants,
to Stop all of this fucking!

This winged “Oh!” and “Ah! Ay”
is regarded as putrid & as backward
as the unschooled, untoward act to which all Latinx
beautiful bandaid poets each owe our origin,
(save for me—for I was born a Jewy bastard,
to my drugged mami, herself born in Miami
only to undo progress and birth me by South
American Caesarean, which was followed by yet another
incision,  owing to a most foreign religion— )

Aztecs also practiced incision,
Aztec princes lined up
with obsidian maces,
to kill their equivalent of Mr & Mrs. Macbeth,
and eat their pet guard dog MacKenneth—
before Anne Hathaway nagged
and nagged poor Billy Shake
-speare “change the setting to Scotland, dear.”

I have eaten butterflies without abstinence,
and know they never swum in schools,
on occasions, puffed on a dragonfly butt,
(avoidant of clichés, like the fashion, crack, nicknamed Paco)
yet hard for me, to belly so many pickled verses,
of anesthetized wing, so many affirmations, bad X rays
of those who compare their bouncing hearts
to basketballs dripping guacamole, dribbling towards
the big nacho American Dream, and never back into
politics, of those ever-dying grandmotherlands aflame,
Well-educated, to sign their MFA noms de plume de familia
with signature X: Latinx, Pax Americana band-aids
over the genitalia that bankrupt US as we speak: Latinx,
rain of latex to please censor/murder
all myriad  names for the vocal soul of sex.

By Arrufo Gomez de Askenasy
*=Arturo Desimone

***

Arturo Desimone, Aruban-Argentinian writer and visual artist, born 1984 on the island Aruba which he inhabited until the age of 22, when he emigrated to the Netherlands. He later relocated to Argentina while working on projects related to his Argentinean family background. Desimone’s articles, poetry and fiction pieces previously appeared in CounterPunch,  Círculo de Poesía (Spanish) Island, Drunken Boat,  the Writers Resist anthology, and New Orleans Review. He performed at the international poetry festival of Granada, Nicaragua.  Two collections of poetry and visual art recently appeared in the UK and in Argentina: “Mare Nostrum / Costa Nostra” (Hesterglock Press, 2019) and more recently “Ouafa and Thawra” appeared in the UK and throughout Africa and in bilingual editions as La Amada de Túnez in Argentina.