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Leslie Sainz’s Followers (2)
Leslie Sainz
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Have You Been Long Enough At Table
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published
2023
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3 editions
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Black Warrior Review 44.1
by |
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Amado Kiyumi: El gato sin pata
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Third Foot: Inch #25-37
by
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published
2020
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* Note: these are all the books on Goodreads for this author. To add more, click here.
“Para los balseros
There is no country
where the dead don't float.
Men and children going,
having gone, lungwet
across thickened water.
Be it the body to know
what's missing. To call
back the colors. At sea
the stomach is a bugle
though I've heard it
called a scream.
Oil drums headless
as monarchs, styrofoam
on the knees. Said of
regimes: under or over.
Here or there.
The orchids are lovely
this time of year
and the women, writing.
What covers the land
and is the land-
much in us still.”
― Have You Been Long Enough At Table
There is no country
where the dead don't float.
Men and children going,
having gone, lungwet
across thickened water.
Be it the body to know
what's missing. To call
back the colors. At sea
the stomach is a bugle
though I've heard it
called a scream.
Oil drums headless
as monarchs, styrofoam
on the knees. Said of
regimes: under or over.
Here or there.
The orchids are lovely
this time of year
and the women, writing.
What covers the land
and is the land-
much in us still.”
― Have You Been Long Enough At Table
“Remedios
Para Mamacita
When G-d was a boy the dirt was dark red
and the myths of women, explicit.
Just enough of the world had been distributed
to know what was possible-what you didn't,
couldn't, have. Love hid in the kernels
of handsome mamey fruit. We sorted
through piles of black beans in case they lied
about its whereabouts, we built ladders
we were too tired to climb. We cried.
Eventually, we cried so often we were forced
to invent salvation. We'd fill the largest bucket
we could find with the coldest water. We'd
sit the crier down and crowd behind her.
After several synchronized breaths, we'd lift
the bucket and tip it downward. What was left
no longer resembled crying, but we chanted
come back, come back to us, anyway.”
― Have You Been Long Enough At Table
Para Mamacita
When G-d was a boy the dirt was dark red
and the myths of women, explicit.
Just enough of the world had been distributed
to know what was possible-what you didn't,
couldn't, have. Love hid in the kernels
of handsome mamey fruit. We sorted
through piles of black beans in case they lied
about its whereabouts, we built ladders
we were too tired to climb. We cried.
Eventually, we cried so often we were forced
to invent salvation. We'd fill the largest bucket
we could find with the coldest water. We'd
sit the crier down and crowd behind her.
After several synchronized breaths, we'd lift
the bucket and tip it downward. What was left
no longer resembled crying, but we chanted
come back, come back to us, anyway.”
― Have You Been Long Enough At Table
“Sonnet for Elegua
In pursuit of an ending, I quickened my pace. I had no questions, not my own, to recover in. The only certainty: the evening
under the oil palm when you gave me my dry feet.
From then on, dreams as warm as atoms. The exiled boy, always desperate to be heard, appeared mostly as crickets and hinges.
Three summers ago, he mutilated a pigeon by hurling it against the wall of a market.
It made sounds like the latch rattle of an icebox and the stain never came out,
even when we used aguardiente. I've left
my outline in worse places. Lately, by the window, where I count the women with thicker, blacker hair, study the way it tightens around their shoulders like bulls ascending.
What occupies me is also running.
It never tires, but rather, repositions itself.
I should like to reposition myself, please. All of me this time.”
― Have You Been Long Enough At Table
In pursuit of an ending, I quickened my pace. I had no questions, not my own, to recover in. The only certainty: the evening
under the oil palm when you gave me my dry feet.
From then on, dreams as warm as atoms. The exiled boy, always desperate to be heard, appeared mostly as crickets and hinges.
Three summers ago, he mutilated a pigeon by hurling it against the wall of a market.
It made sounds like the latch rattle of an icebox and the stain never came out,
even when we used aguardiente. I've left
my outline in worse places. Lately, by the window, where I count the women with thicker, blacker hair, study the way it tightens around their shoulders like bulls ascending.
What occupies me is also running.
It never tires, but rather, repositions itself.
I should like to reposition myself, please. All of me this time.”
― Have You Been Long Enough At Table
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