← v17n1, Spring 2018
Poetry · Volume 17, Number 1

Breton in Mexico

Beside the blue of the wall

I’d give you rest—O marvel—from painters’ hands

If you didn’t find me ridiculous

I’ve watched you—profile blazing—crossing the midday street

Whiskered anemones anchored deep in your black-water hair

Silver fingers curling around your wrists

Under the arched whale bones of pallid nights in Mexico

I’ve sent love letters written in the wisdom of obsidian

Night hiding its amethyst teeth in cloud

I’ve shown you my chains the keyless door to my psyche’s chambers

Danced with you under the pepper tree’s sleeves

in slippers of woven grass

Drunk mescal

With you

I’ve faced the stern Trotskys of Russia Leon and Natalia Sedova

Been a tourist of dusk

A tourist of pyramids of markets of memory’s turquoise

Been a foolish man waving goodbye to a window

To surrealism