April 2024
Authors' Note: In January 2019 we gave a poetry reading together to present our recently published books at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center in Venice, California. For that reading, we created and then read in tandem one poem that twined together lines from "It Isn’t That They Mean to Kill You" and "My Zocalo Heart." Returning to the braided poem five years later, we decided to work on it again, tightening lines, replacing words, changing the rhythm to increase the tension between the two poems. It was fun to reenter the poems and feel them come alive and combine into something new. We think “La Fuente Dulce and the Conenose Bugs” would be a good name for a rock band.
La Fuente Dulce and the Conenose Bugs
It isn’t that they mean to kill you
I have built a grand passionate fountain
in my zocalo heart
they just want honey from your veins
where black-braided women rendezvous
with blue mockingbirds
a light kiss on the lips
the neck
the wrist
while you lie sleeping
leaves ruffle in a tropical breeze
a long drink and they’re off
los holanes de una falda
leaving flecks of shit
amid the twitter of romance
that could cause swelling
I laid the tile for you
fever
in pieces con cuidado a mano
pressed the gritty soft grout
death
around a glass mosaic
mirror of sky and sea
they ride inside
on your best friend
the green flora of Guatemalan hillsides
rose-colored clouds de una tierra Antigua
purple smoke from a rumbling volcano
they find you in the desert
and the dark brown of everyone’s eyes
where you go to quiet down
I rise with the scent of you
oh sweet one
then fly away like dreams
naked in the sparkling play
on silent wings
of a fountain I have built for you
©2024 Penelope Moffet/Mary Torregrossa
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