April 2015
I am a student at the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA Program, where I study poetry and translation. My work was selected in a contest hosted by Missouri State University Press to be included in the anthology Proud to Be: Writing by American Warriors,
(volume 3). My poetry and translations have appeared in Cardinal Sins, Boston Thought, Malpais Review and many other joutnals, both online and print.
(volume 3). My poetry and translations have appeared in Cardinal Sins, Boston Thought, Malpais Review and many other joutnals, both online and print.
Hot Peppers
a strip club in Prague
After several beers my vision vaguely scans the bar mirror, attentive and beaming like a lighthouse. High heels click. On my thigh—manicured fingernails trace figure eights. My posture stiffens tight as her corset. Strobes ignite her platinum wig. “I bet you’d like to have your way with me, American.” Fresh out of a relationship, I switch the subject—brag that I toured a Nazi work camp earlier that day for a college course. “College?” she asks—“then surely you learned that story about the Jewish son and father who were forced to fight to the death in the commandant’s swimming pool, university boy?” Her English broken and sharp. I rise to leave—“surely you didn’t miss your chance to photograph the gas chambers?”—my stool keels over—I stumble toward a set of double doors. A bouncer cracks the granite profile of his face to wink—“she’s a feisty one, American”—his pupils constricted, his mustache clogged with pilsner.
Luck
Freshly-hatched
sea turtles scramble
sand pits,
struggling like
toddlers with missing
letter blocks trying
to spell g-d’s name—
their flipper tracks
a sand-script−
lemon-spotted domes
immediately beautiful
to stalking gulls
that swarm
the sky--
rushing down,
flipping shells
to eat the underbellies−
a few survivors
bob in the surf,
coconut husks−
still captives to the tide.
Leaning into the Afternoons
by Pablo Neruda (translated by DJS)
Leaning into the afternoons I cast my sad netstowards your oceanic eyes.
There in the highest blaze my solitude stretches and burns,
waving its arms like a castaway.
I send red signals across your absent eyes
that wave like the sea or shore by a lighthouse.
You only keep darkness, my distant female,
from your gaze sometimes the coast of dread emerges.
Leaning into the afternoons I fling sad nets
to that sea that churns your oceanic eyes.
The nocturnal birds peck at the first stars
that flash like my soul when I love you.
Night gallops on its shadowy mare
shedding blue tassels over the land.
©2015 Domenic J. Scopa