José Luis Gutiérrez

Tabula Rasa

for Heather

Of better days I’ve no more than this to say:

The Great Wall lies
at the foot of the bed.

Cats in the garden—
our appetites roam

this surfeit of sun
connubial among
​
the hoarfrost and blooms,
an aftermath of bedsheets.

Distance has become landscape:
our intimate histories slated for revision.

Morning is a verb
our mouths meet to conjugate
into psalm.
​

---

God Ma

The apocalypse won’t come in the manner of four equestrian enthusiasts
who favor spandex over riding breeches and in bad need of Breathsavers
or by way of a corporate barbecue as set forth in Revelations.

It will come on a Sunday morning courtesy of a woman
whose hair is a silhouette dance of medusas,
preaching in downtown from an unmarked pulpit.

The motley congregation assembled in the square
seems to profess she is right by default, as pigeons
are the only infidels in attendance and the occasional

nod of consent bumps a naysaying fly off its halo trajectory
Fire-and-brimstone are not just metaphors, she assures
this hapless coalition of the not-quite willing and the terminally oblivious.  

Nevermind that the infernal machinery
of the 20th-century has been vanquished.

Nevermind what the sky, cream-clouded and blue
as a rapture of waves this morning, is trying to say.




 
--
José Luis Gutiérrez