Andrés Cerpa: From 800 Victory Blvd.
Rilke’s language: pleiad wings: the water
& trams running through the deep October where I believed I didn’t need any love.
What do you see or what do you dream?
I see my life as a votive. My body a ditch. The great cities
a forest to loose in the burning
Nothing as wild as man. Boars coming down from the dark
& shot in the street. Green. Green. I miss you. I walked away with a notebook,
five socks, my drugs & two books.
Now I write each night in the morning.
The moment before becomes an expanse. After, I find my face in the mirror.
face like a room with one chair.
ANDRÉS CERPA was
raised in Staten Island, New York. He holds a BA in English Literature from the
University of Delaware and an MFA from Rutgers University Newark. He is a recipient of
a fellowship from the MacDowell Colony and his poems have appeared or are forthcoming
in The Kenyon Review, The Cider Press Review, Hayden’s
Ferry Review, and West Branch.
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