The Cities You've Shown Me, Part VII

for Amyfor Amy

Ontological Vacation (pure poetry)

Ontological Vacation (pure poetry)

1.
Being is in
cahoots with time, and
I've left both of them
behind.
2.
There is a mild
hypochondria
somewhere that suffers
from fear of people.
3.
In the future
you can custom-
design your
suicide.
4.
Bizarrely-shaped
corn fritters
come in bags. I
desire them inadmissibly. My
mantra is wanting.
5.
Desire is shaped like
bags of fried gizzards, always
awaiting the call of hunger's
chicken-lust.
6.
Analysands, aside from
having many a's,
always know more than
he who gazes.
7.
Consumption can be
confounding. Just talk about it
to a baby named Doughboy
who's eaten too much of everything
but his share. His rolls resist, still full
of hunger and hope.

The Cities You've Shown Me, Part V

for Amy

In Search of a Place to Be Born

Nature
subdivides
and, born, before our eyes,
the names of places, sacred.
Deer Run, Owls Creek,
Willows Weep. Naming
speaks as electric dreams
on waysides, signs
of time, immortal
in wood fires, posted
on wood stilts, wired well.
Where I was born still
stands; where stillborn
I was born;
still, borne, before
I was born.
Still in the waters
of a big river; I was born
in the blue-eyed rim-
water of a sea, inside; stilly
I was born and
I am still
born.
Outside the birth, well
beyond the birth-mills
where they make
love with haste, where
babes are made with haste
to make haste, there was
a place.
It remains, still,
its waning name alongside
scrub native to somewhere;
kudzu garland strung
on juniper, an oak tree, divine
maple. There is,
still, in a clearing, some
clear water, ample handfuls
of mud, full of
swimming polliwogs,
fallen wood, a puddle, a
pond of black water, a
place to be born.

-Eduardo Ramos

The Cities You've Shown Me, Part IIII

for Amy