Trevor Haug: Cien Poetas Mexicanas

I have invited

100 Mexican poets

into my bedroom

I shake them alive

like dusty puppets

who need forearms for spines

and fists for brains

My Spanish is lacking

so their eloquent soliloquies

are full of gaps

like messages from space

disrupted by solar winds

I catch something from Carpio

about the virgin,

a whisper of death from Espino

Lerdo tries to explain light

Solana, a tree

I coax from some

the shadows of sadness;

from others, secrets

buried by time's conquest

Hour after hour

they interupt each other

in an anthology of ruined verse

In the end, leaving me to dream,

they interpret each other's awakenings

Gallardo is in the corner,

head in his folded arms

and Nova is lost

in a volume

of Neruda's love sonnets

Plaza and Rincon

have slipped out

to make quesadillas

While the rest have joined

the moon and the stars,

riding like bandits across the sky

Trevor Haug