Last Day Cruising

 
            the waitresses’ fingers clutch
                        an empty champagne flute
with pleasurable
tightness

Clipped nails
Knuckles veined by blue
                                                erratic
            wanderings
                              of the blood
Birdbone wrists--

Bracelet beads
            pink
like the thumb-sized bodies
            of the parrot fish
                        I fed
                                stale bread crust

                                    the scales’ radiant sections
                                    watery
                                    iridescent
                                                like sun
                                                            on oil slicks

I ask the waitress
            if she ever gets a day off --
if she ever jet-skied  
            to that artificial shipwreck
                                    swarming
                                                with schools of groupers
                        and deeper terrace reefs
                                    of brain and star coral--
                        Barriers against the currents

A bucket rattles   or
something   tinny.

 I slap two twenties down--
            a bribe--
to take care of her
                        bills in Bosnia
        
She positions another
            stand-up cocktail menu--
                        a playful shoulder punch and giggle--
                                    the menu topples over--
                                                already she is gone--





The Motel Room

 
Rembrandt’s Self Portrait
Decorates in replica--
            Persistent furrow,
            Skimpy beard,
            Stiff nose--
Reminds me
Of my babysitter. 

Face down
A blonde sleeps.
Her bruised foot
            Dangles
                        Off the bed.
Rembrandt eyes
Her bare ass
As though he knows
            What he is doing--

I   still  cannot  tell
Tell
How my babysitter--
                                    Groaned
“This will be the final time”--
            First hollow promise.

                       

 

 

Someone Is Beating a Woman
            by Andrei Voznesensky (translation by DJS)
 

Someone is beating a woman
in a car so hot and dark
only the whites of her eyes shine.
Her feet batter the roof
like berserk searchlight beams.

Someone is beating a woman.
The way that slaves are beaten.
Beautifully whimpering,
she yanks open the door and drops
                                                        onto the road.

Brakes squeal.
Someone races towards her,
flogs her, drags her
face down in the stinging nettles…

Scumbag, how deliberately he beats her,
Stilyaga, bastard, tough guy,
his dashing shoes, as slender as a flatiron,
stabbing into her ribs.

Such are the pleasures of rebel soldiers,
the delights of peasants…
Somewhere, stamping under moonlit grasses,
someone is beating a woman.

Someone is beating a woman.
Century on century, no end in sight.
It’s the young that suffer this. Somberly
our wedding bells stir up alarm.
Someone is beating a woman.

And what is with the blazing welts?
Last-minute slaps?
That’s life, you say—how so?--
someone is beating a woman.

But her light is steadfast,
death-defying and divine.
Religions—no,
                        revelations—no.
There are
                        women.

She lies there placid like a lake,
her eyes tear-swollen,
yet still, she doesn’t belong to him
any more than the stars to the sky.

And the stars? They’re pounding
like raindrops on black glass.
Slipping down
                        they cool
her grief-fevered forehead.

 

 
 
The Cemetery
            by Miguel Hernandez (translated by DJS)

The cemetery lies close
where you and I are sleeping
among blue prickly pears,
blue ancient-plants and children
screaming full of life
if a dead body darkens the road.

From here to the cemetery everything
is blue   golden   crystal clear.
Four steps   and the dead.
Four steps   and the living.

Crystal clear   blue   and golden,
my son, out there, seems far away.