BIO
Julián David Bañuelos is a Mexican-American poet and translator from West, Tx. His work can be read in Wine Cellar Press and Latino Book Review.
Footsteps
this alma of mine
es de música
que rebotaban
por bosques extranjeros
y adentro
hay notas musicales
dried in the dirt—
Sígueme.
Prescribed burn, early Spring
for Francisco “Paco” Perez
when He is near let’s meet on Kewanee
Avenue. Let us fill blue skies with smoke
—Let us teeter the taut clothesline once more—
Our mouths will burn alongside the runners.
Hinterlands scorched by the smoking embers
We laid upon it.
I had been waiting,
Cremating evidences existence
Beneath the greater darkness of autumn
Into early spring where I need no tongue
Only eyes, only teeth, only anger
Enduring and insentient. Springtime
Sickness in the air. The warmth of flames.
A light whose only choice is to burn bright
Through night and day filling the Hub City.
“What else besides Buddy Holly?”
for Reginald Dwayne Betts
the Hub City feels like: night
torn
roofer palms
held
up 5 o’ clock
shadow
where
narcan
nasal spray
wakes Buddy Holly fanatics
&
rattlesnakes rattle
tattle tales
tall
as mulberry trees
gravel the knee
until
a view
is just that
a
view in the rear—
a viewing
a
mirror can only give
where
bolls
of cotton
become dirt
where
the keys lay
under door mats
where
the winds
swing open screen doors
on
lay of the land
a whole lot
of nothing or something reined
in
by the outstretched arms
of
bodies
ready
to wake.