Shopping
Th
e courteous store employee
smiling and always flattering
showed you two dresses
a red one with revealing cleavage
and the other, a snow-white
that covered your voluptuous breast
but falling exquisitely over your body
it demanded everyone’s attention
the employee kept on flattering you
and I signalled to you
the red was my first choice
and the white falling gracefully on you
to the delight of the employee
both, I said —
the red which complimented
your beautiful cleavage
and the white that reminded me
the first time
I conquered your untouched body

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1771713208

Whitewash

As the years passed, by chance, no intention meant, they replaced

the white of the marble with whitewash, certain white,

of course, more blinding, more outside what was needed.

There were many inscriptions and designs on the walls. These

days they whitewash everything: yards, flowerpots, rocks, even

the tree trunks, up the middle; it is an opening, a cleanness, it

smells of health the way the sidewalks and the churches shine

with a new classical simplicity, something that belongs to us.

Each evening, they place on the whitewashed fence wall

a flowerpot with carnations that gaze at the sea. On the front

step of the opposite house, Mrs. Pelagia looks angry, her black

apron is splattered with drops of whitewash as if covered

with small, bloomed daisies.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763726

Long Listed for the 2023 Griffin poetry Awards

2023 Longlist Announcement

Anonymity
We expected Phillip to die soon; I then understood
that all the eons wouldn’t be enough; while we sat
silently a voice was heard from the top of the stairway
“Phillip” it said, and again, “Phillip” without waiting
for an answer; I tried to discern who it was, but no one
was there, when I thought that that voice perhaps was
there all along, I mean it was all we had in the world,
“Phillip” it repeated as if to retain our name for a little
longer amid the eternal catastrophe.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763564